<img class="tw-image " src="https://www.smartworld.it/images/2023/11/16/messaggi-apple-iphone_880x495.jpg” width=”880″ height=”495″ alt=”The EU has pardoned iMessages: isn’t Apple now going back on its word?” title=”The EU has pardoned iMessages: isn’t Apple now going back on its word?”>
In recent weeks we have often talked about the conflictual relationship between the European Union and Apple: the Digital Markets Act, i.e. the new European regulation for competition in digital markets, will bring several innovations to the tech sector, many of which will have a major impact on Apple and its products. Among the most striking changes, the company will have to allow the installation of alternative marketplaces to the App Store on iPhone and will have to accept browsers with proprietary rendering engines.
To establish the digital sectors in which companies will have to allow greater openness, the European Commission had identified a certain number of so-called gatekeeperi.e. products and services that have a dominant position such as to create distortions in the economic system and prevent free competition. And if there were no doubts about the gatekeeper role for services like App Store, WhatsApp or Google Maps, for other names like iMessages, Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising la issue was still pending.
iMessage, Edge and Bing have been pardoned: what happens now?
Two days ago, the European Commission announced the response to the investigation relating to these potential gatekeepers: the four products in question (iMessage, Bing, Edge, Microsoft Advertising) they do not have the necessary characteristics to be considered gatekeepers from the European Union and, consequently, will not have to submit to the DMA.
Not being considered a “gatekeeper”, Edge will be able to be the default browser on Windows and Microsoft will not be obliged to show users a list of options for choosing the browser
This means that the respective companies (Apple and Microsoft) will not have to adopt the practices necessary to guarantee free competition: for example, Microsoft will be able to set Edge as the default browser on Windows and Apple would not be forced to make iMessage interoperable with other platforms messaging.
However, on November 16th Apple announced the implementation of the RCS protocol (if you don’t know what it is, we explain it here) on iMessage, which will allow users to use the iPhone’s default Messages app to chat with other messaging platforms as well. messaging (such as the Messages apps on Android smartphones, but also WhatsApp in the future).
In the past, the Apple company had been very firm on its desire to keep iMessage “closed”, also considering that in the United States, having iMessage or not (and therefore an iPhone) really makes a difference in communications: for this reason, everyone had interpreted the announcement of the implementation of RCS as a surrender to what the EU required, in advance before the decision on gatekeepers.
It didn’t help that Apple’s statement arrived on November 16th, the last day to appeal against the DMA.
This is precisely where the question in the title comes from: Will Apple back down? Unlikely, but not impossible: the heavy fines foreseen for those who do not respect the DMA were certainly a great deterrent for Apple, which will now have much less interest in quickly implementing the RCS protocol.
It is worth remembering once again that the RCS protocol, which represents the evolution of SMS, is about to become a very important standard for exchanging messages, especially in the European Union where third-party apps such as WhatsApp will also have to implement it.
After promising users and the whole world the interoperability of its messaging app, can Apple really back out?
