UK antitrust investigation into Apple closed for now – but will likely re-open

A UK antitrust investigation into Apple has officially closed – despite finding the company to be at fault – after the regulator missed a legal deadline.

However, a case seems almost certain to be re-opened under an upcoming law which will grant new powers to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) …

UK antitrust investigation into Apple

The CMA launched an antitrust investigation into Apple back in 2021. A year later, it concluded that the company had breached competition law in two ways.

First, it said that Apple’s exclusion of cloud gaming services harmed both developers and consumers.

Second, it said that the company’s insistence that all iOS browsing apps use WebKit blocked effective competition.

The CMA is concerned this severely limits the potential for rival browsers to differentiate themselves from Safari (for example, on features such as speed and functionality) and limits Apple’s incentives to invest in its browser engine.

The EU also decided this latter issue breached competition law, and Apple agreed to drop the requirement within the bloc. However, with the UK is outside the EU and therefore not covered by this change.

Case now closed

The CMA messed up very badly when it missed a legal deadline, after a legal battle which centered on the meaning of the words “study” and “shall.”

Bloomberg reports that the regulator has now dropped the case.

The UK’s antitrust regulator closed its probe into app stores run by Google and Apple ahead of the implementation of new laws which gives it more power to rein in the dominance of a handful of major tech firms.

But a new case likely to be opened

However, the UK has essentially copied and pasted the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the form of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act which comes into force in the fall.

It seems all but certain that the CMA will use the powers granted to it under this new law to open new cases against both Apple and Google.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash