Wednesday’s decisions come ahead of a set of heftier non-compliance rulings from the Commission later this month — which may include fines.
DMA demands
In order to comply with the DMA, the Commission said Apple will need to give its competitors the same access to a range of existing iPhone functionalities, such as notifications and device-pairing, as it provides to its own devices like the Apple Watch.
The EU executive also stated that the company must overhaul how it communicates with developers.
For Apple, the decision amounts to a “micro-managing” of the future of the iPhone, said Dirk Auer of the International Center for Law & Economics.
Others believe the decision doesn’t go far enough. “Third party developers will still not have real app freedom and interoperability can still be hindered by Apple,” said Jan Pefrat of advocacy group European Digital Rights.
Google, in turn, needs to make further changes to its Play Store and Google Search service to stop promoting its own services over those of rivals, the Commission said.
Google’s European policy lead Oliver Bethell said the company has engaged in good-faith negotiations resulting in changes that have diminished traffic for European airlines and hotels.
But the findings concerning Google’s search result page, which follows almost 15 years of similar antitrust casework, should send a signal to parent company Alphabet that its approach “needs to change radically,” said Emmanuel Mounier, head of trade group eu travel tech.
