Apple Agrees to Open Up iPad App Distribution in Europe

Apple has tacitly raised a white flag following the European Commission’s announcement earlier this week that iPadOS qualifies as a “gatekeeper” under its new regulations and will need to be opened up in the same way as the iPhone was in March.

The European Commission was on shaky ground when making this determination, and some accused it of moving the goalposts after the fact, leading to speculation that Apple might challenge the decision.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) designates several platforms as “gatekeepers” because of their large market share; however, iPadOS didn’t originally meet this standard.

Technically, it still doesn’t. However, on the same day it designated iOS and the iPhone as gatekeeper platforms in September, the EC also “opened a market investigation to assess whether Apple’s iPadOS” should also be included.

Earlier this week, it ruled that the number of “business users” exceeded the threshold, even though that metric isn’t part of the DMA. It also added that since the end user numbers would soon meet the threshold and that since all users are “locked-in to iPadOS,” it considers it “an important gateway for business users to reach end users,” and therefore, Apple’s “entrenched and durable position” needs to be dealt with.

Our market investigation showed that despite not meeting the thresholds, iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers.Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition

Political semantics aside, as we’ve previously noted, the omission of the iPad and iPadOS from Apple’s app distribution changes had the potential to make things awkward for iPad users and developers alike. Since the App Store hosts many “universal” apps that run on both the iPhone and iPad, developers who wanted to reach customers on both platforms couldn’t realistically exit the App Store. New App Store terms in the EU provide some cost savings on Apple’s commissions, but there’s no way to avoid them entirely, and trying to offer in-app purchases and subscriptions could be a confusing mess when half an app lives on a different app marketplace.

This also applies to the matter of third-party browsers. While alternatives like Google Chrome would be allowed to use the Chromium engine on iOS, it would still be required to use Safari’s WebKit on the iPad.

With that in mind, it was likely mere stubbornness on Apple’s part that left the iPad out in the first place. The company was determined to comply with the letter of the DMA and not a jot or tittle more.

However, the good news for European iPad users and developers is that Apple has seemingly seen the light and decided that it makes more sense to acquiesce to the EC’s new requirements rather than try and fight them.

In a post on its developer news site today, Apple acknowledged the European Commission’s ruling and confirmed that it will bring the same changes it made for iOS to iPadOS “later this fall, as required.”

This week, the European Commission designated iPadOS a gatekeeper platform under the Digital Markets Act. Apple will bring our recent iOS changes for apps in the European Union (EU) to iPadOS later this fall, as required. Developers can choose to adopt the Alternative Business Terms for Apps in the EU that will include these additional capabilities and options on iPadOS, or stay on Apple’s existing terms.Apple

The European Commission has given Apple six months to bring the iPad into compliance, which means Apple has to implement them by November at the latest. The timeframe suggests they’ll come in iPadOS 18 or a subsequent iPadOS 18 point release.

When this does happen, iPad users will be able to install third-party app marketplaces, download apps directly from developers’ websites, and select alternative browsers — complete with third-party browsing engines; iPad users can also expect to see a new prompt when opening Safari that lists the alternatives available and allow them to select one.

The only significant iPhone change that won’t be coming to the iPad is the opening up of Apple Pay to third-party payment providers. That’s because this one is based on the NFC hardware in the iPhone for contactless in-person payments and not the underlying Apple Pay technology.