Apple responds to criticism by reaffirming its commitment to the EU’s Digital Markets Act

BRUSSELS: Apple on Monday brushed off criticism that it has not done enough to open up its closed ecosystem as required by the European Union’s digital market law, saying it has complied with the landmark legislation.

The DMA includes a list of obligations and prohibitions for Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Meta Platforms and Microsoft, which the six companies had to comply with on March 7.

In recent weeks, Apple has announced several changes that allow app developers to distribute their iPhone apps directly to consumers instead of Apple’s App Store, and developers can distribute their apps to users in the European Union outside of the App Store.

The company told app developers, business users and competitors at a day-long hearing organized by the European Commission that it has redesigned its systems to comply with the DMA.

“We were guided, first of all, by making sure that we followed the law. And then secondly, that we did it in a way that was consistent with our values and consistent with the language that we’ve developed with our users over the years. It’s been a very long time. And we think we’ve achieved it,” Apple attorney Kyle Andeer told the hearing.

“And I think we’re focused on that from a user perspective. That’s not to say that we’re not focused on the developer impact, but I think from our perspective, first of all, we’re watching very closely what impact all these different changes have on the user experience that we’ve been providing our customers for 15, 16 years with the iPhone through?”

Meta will present its compliance efforts in a separate hearing on Tuesday, Amazon on Wednesday, Alphabet on Thursday, ByteDance on Friday and Microsoft next Tuesday.

Companies that do not comply with DMA risk investigations can result in fines of up to 10% of their global annual turnover.

(This story has been reformatted to include an apostrophe in the title)