Apple loses its EU court challenge over gatekeeper status under the DMA

Apple has spent two years arguing that Europe’s digital rulebook should not apply to it in quite the way Brussels insists. On Wednesday, the EU’s General Court told it, in effect, that it does.

The court threw out Apple’s challenge to being labelled a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, the designation that ties the App Store and iOS to a long list of obligations built to give rivals a way in. It was a clean loss on the points the court was willing to hear.

Apple’s core argument was really about how you count a company. It said the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV ought to be treated as separate services rather than lumped together, a distinction that would have shrunk what the rules could reach.

The judges were not persuaded. They found that Apple’s app stores all do the same job of connecting developers with users, a conclusion that goes to the heart of the long fight over third-party app stores.

One strand of the case never got a proper hearing. The court decided that Apple’s complaints about iMessage were inadmissible, so that piece falls away rather than being resolved either way.

It helps to remember what being a gatekeeper actually involves. It obliges Apple to let rival app stores onto iOS, to allow developers to steer users towards cheaper ways to pay, and to open some of its services to competitors, none of which it wanted to do.

Some of that has already happened, grudgingly. Apple now allows alternative app stores and outside payment links in the EU, but it has wrapped them in fees and warnings that developers say strip out most of the point.

That is why the company fought so hard. The DMA carries fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover, and it is the foundation for the first wave of probes into Apple, Google and Meta.

Apple is hardly the only one testing the law in court. Since the rules took effect in May 2023, it, Meta and ByteDance have all mounted challenges, and the results have not gone uniformly Brussels’ way.

Only last month the same court split the difference for Meta, freeing Marketplace from the rules while keeping Messenger inside them. Set against that, Apple’s outright defeat stings a little more.

The timing does it no favours either. Apple is already staring at a Commission finding that its App Store still blocks developers from steering users to cheaper options, and it has held several features back from EU users while it argues over interoperability.

There is still somewhere to go from here. Apple can take the ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union, the bloc’s highest court, though only on points of law rather than a fresh look at the facts.

The dispute carries a geopolitical charge as well. Washington has bristled at European rules that land hardest on American companies, and each ruling like this one adds a little more heat to that quarrel.

For the Commission, a win like this is worth more than the single case. Having its central designation survive a head-on challenge steadies everything that has been built on top of it.

For Apple, the practical effect is that nothing pauses. The obligations stay live while any appeal grinds on, so the company keeps complying with rules it still believes are wrong.

Its real objection, tellingly, was never in front of the court. Apple maintains that the DMA forces it to weaken the privacy and security that define the iPhone, and Wednesday’s decision settles only who the rules apply to, not whether they are wise.