Brussels asks Apple to open its doors to competition

The European Comission This Tuesday he told the CEO of the American company Apple, Tim Cook, that he must “open your doors to competitors”once the regulation of the digital markets law has come into force, the new antitrust rule of the European Union.

“The next task for Apple and other large technology companies, under the digital markets law, is to open their doors to competitors,” said the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and responsible for regulating the digital economy, Thierry Breton, after meeting with Cook in Brussels.

Breton told Apple’s CEO that European consumers should benefit from competitive services when using an iPhone, whether using its electronic payment service, its browser or the mobile application store.

“EU regulation encourages innovation without compromising security and privacy,” The commissioner continued about one of Apple’s main arguments for closing its devices to competition.

Breton also celebrated that the new iPhone 15 incorporates the USB-C port that the EU has promoted so that all devices sold in the internal market have the same universal charger.

The meeting between Breton and Cook occurred three weeks after Brussels forced Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft to comply with the digital markets law, the new one with which the EU wants to control the market power of the big tech companies.

The Commission, however, is analyzing whether Apple’s iMessage messaging service and the apple brand’s tablet operating system must also comply with the regulations.