For over a year, Apple has deliberately obstructed any genuine opportunity for rival browser engines to operate on its iOS platform within the European Union, all while disingenuously claiming confusion over their absence. This is not about promoting user choice; it is about protecting Apple’s multi-billion dollar revenue streams, particularly those tied to the App Store and Safari.
Safari is far more than just a utility app. It generates huge sums of money annually through Apple’s lucrative search deal with Google, transforming it into a key pillar of the company’s services revenue. This financial incentive underpins Apple’s efforts to suppress meaningful browser competition on iOS. By restricting the capabilities of rival browsers, Apple also limits the potential of web apps, ensuring they cannot compete with native apps that pay tolls to the App Store. The result is stagnation that suppresses innovation and harms both developers and consumers.
Apple employs a range of technical and contractual barriers to maintain this dominance, typically under the guise of “security and privacy.” However, as the U.S. Department of Justice aptly put it, these justifications often serve as an “elastic shield” to protect Apple’s financial interests. The most egregious example is the requirement that any browser wishing to use its own engine within the EU must launch an entirely new app, which forces it to abandon its existing user base. This commercially punitive mandate all but guarantees that no rational vendor will invest the considerable resources required to port a browser engine. As a result, the Digital Markets Act’s goal of fostering genuine platform competition is effectively undermined.
At a recent DMA workshop, Apple executives offered vague and unconvincing explanations, shifting blame while feigning confusion over the lack of alternative browser engines on iOS. This occurred despite over a year of detailed feedback highlighting Apple’s self-imposed restrictions. The claim that rival browser developers “have everything they need” to launch their engines is simply false. Apple has made it economically unviable. Its insistence that DMA compliance will remain geographically limited to the EU, even as it applies other EU-driven changes globally, further underscores a strategy of malicious compliance.
This sort of conduct poses a broader threat to the web as an open, interoperable platform. This comes from a company that once positioned itself as a champion of the open web. Without true engine-level competition on iOS, Apple alone determines what web technologies are viable on one of the world’s most important operating systems. This is not merely a European issue; it is a global one. The effectiveness of the DMA, and its potential to set a global precedent, depends entirely on the European Commission’s ability to enforce clearly detailed regulations.
Apple is fully aware that genuine competition from browsers and web apps would pose a direct challenge to its growing services revenue. This is not just a legal matter. It is a battle for control over a significant segment of the digital economy. Internal communications reveal long-standing concerns within Apple about the web’s potential to erode App Store dominance and weaken the platform lock-in enabled by services like iMessage.
Although the European Commission deserves credit for enacting the DMA, its implementation has been marred by critical missteps. The rules are overly broad, occasionally impractical, and often times betray a lack of understanding of software development. While the intention to curb gatekeeper power is commendable, the vagueness of certain requirements places an unrealistic expectation on profit-driven corporations to voluntarily honor the implied spirit of regulation. The Commission must articulate precise, enforceable directives if it hopes to compel Apple to truly comply with the DMA’s core objectives.
The future of the open web may well depend on it.