Two more Apple products, specifically Maps and Ads, could be big enough to be designated as gatekeepers under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The EU has announced that it has received notifications from the company that those services meet DMA thresholds. It will now have 45 days to decide whether to designate Apple as a gatekeeper for either of them.
Under DMA rules, services that have 45 million monthly active end users and 10,000 yearly business users in the past three financial years can earn the “gatekeeper” designation. That means to say, they’re considered to have a significant impact on their markets. Apple already has several products with the designation, namely the Safari web browser, the iOS and iPadOS, as well as the App Store. As such, it has to adhere to a strict set of rules for those services and is prohibited from favoring its own products over rivals and from locking users into its ecosystem.
Apple has submitted an official rebuttal and will discuss with the EU why Maps and Ads shouldn’t be designated, according to Reuters. The company said Maps sees very limited usage in the EU compared to its competitors, such as Google Maps. It also denied the Apple Ads is a major player in the bloc’s online advertising industry and said that it has minimal share compared to ad services by Google, Meta, TikTok and even X. “We look forward to further explaining to the European Commission why Apple Maps and Apple Ads should not be designated,” Apple said in a statement.
The EU says Apple Maps may be big enough to be considered a DMA gatekeeper
