THE European Union warned Apple to open up its highly guarded iPhone and iPad operating systems to rival technologies, or risk significant fines under its flagship digital antitrust rules.
EU watchdogs announced under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that the company must step into line with strict new laws on making operating systems fully functional with other technologies.
The Brussels-based authority gave the company six months to comply, or face the threat of future penalties.
While the announcement is a step shy of a formal investigation, the EU aims to compel Apple to re-engineer its services to allow rival companies to access the iPhone and iPad operating systems.
“Today is the first time we use specification proceedings under the DMA to guide Apple towards effective compliance with its interoperability obligations,” EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said.
“Effective interoperability, for example with smartphones and their operating systems, plays an important role in this.”
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Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One of the aims of the DMA is to ensure that other developers can gain access to key Apple features, such as its Siri voice commands and its payments chip.
The EU may later decide to launch a formal probe if Apple does not step into line with the DMA, which could eventually lead to hefty fines of up to 10 per cent of global annual sales.
Apple already faces a parallel investigation into its application store rules for developers, which could also lead to hefty penalties.
Earlier this month, the tech giant announced the latest version of its flagship device, the iPhone 16, with bets on modest hardware upgrades and artificial intelligence technology that is still on the horizon.
But in June, the US giant said that certain features – such as Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing – would be held back from the EU, due to the DMA’s requirements on operating systems to work with third-party apps. BLOOMBERG
