The EU May Be Going After Apple Maps Next

The European Commission has already forced Apple to open up app distribution and connectivity in most European countries, and now it could be setting its sights on Apple Maps.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was passed in late 2022 in an attempt to prevent large companies from abusing their market power, ensuring a level playing field for new players and smaller competitors. It introduced a new “gatekeeper” designation, setting a threshold where companies would be considered significant enough to come under the DMA’s terms.

In late 2023, the EC designated six big tech companies as gatekeepers under the new regulations — including Apple — and gave them until March 2024 to comply with the new requirements to open up competition.

However, EU regulators were only targeting the specific services that met the gatekeeper criteria — typically the number of users. For Apple, that was the App Store, Apple Pay, and Safari’s WebKit browser engine, which third-party iOS browsers were also compelled to use.

This ruling led Apple to announce significant changes in the EU, changing its App Store fee structure, allowing for alternative app marketplaces, opening up NFC payments, and allowing developers to build their own browser engines on the iPhone.

There’s a fair bit of nuance behind the EU’s gatekeeper designations, as demonstrated by the fact that the new rules initially only applied to the iPhone. It wasn’t until a few months later that Apple agreed to open up iPad app distribution, when the European Commission decided that the iPad actually did qualify as a gatekeeper, “despite not meeting the thresholds,” as then-European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager candidly admitted.

Nevertheless, Vestager said the EC felt the iPad should be included as it’s “an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers.” In short, the EC decided that the iPad was a gatekeeper because the number of business users exceeded the threshold, even though that metric isn’t officially part of the DMA.

Next Up: Apple Maps

Plenty of other Apple services have flown below the EU’s radar, but now Apple Maps has crossed a crucial line that’s made regulators sit up and take notice.

According to Reuters, Apple has just notified the European Commission that Apple Maps has now met the DMA’s gatekeeper threshold of having more than 45 million active monthly users. Apple’s advertising services have also hit the same mark.

This doesn’t mean that Apple Maps and Apple Ads are automatically designated as gatekeepers — that’s still a decision that needs to be made by the European Commission, as it did when it published its original list in September 2023.

Under the terms of the DMA, the Commission has 45 working days after receiving notice to decide whether a service or company should be tagged as a gatekeeper. If it decides that they do meet the requirements, Apple would then be given six months to comply with its obligations under the DMA.

Apple, which has been aggressively challenging the DMA on several fronts, has already submitted an official rebuttal as to why neither Apple Maps nor Apple Ads should be considered gatekeepers.

Considering Apple’s advertising business to be anti-competitive feels almost laughable in the face of behemoths like Google and Meta. Apple Ads is little more than a side hustle, and Apple is saying as much. However, Apple Maps is a bit trickier. The company claims it’s not used all that much in the EU when compared to Google Maps and Waze, which is probably true. Further, it lacks the kind of features that “would allow it to connect business users and end users more directly,” Reuters notes.

If Apple Maps does end up being regulated by the DMA, it’s hard to say what would specifically need to change. Apple already added the ability for users in the EU to set a default navigation app in iOS 18.4, but Apple could be required to ensure third-party developers have the same ability to make their maps interact with iOS as Apple Maps does and allow apps to integrate more directly into Apple Maps.