Ahead of the iOS 18 Beta 2 release earlier this week, the company announced that it wouldn’t be bringing Apple Intelligence and certain other iOS 18 features to Europe due to regulatory concerns. In a statement released at the time, Apple said: “We are concerned that the DMA’s interoperability requirements may force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that put our users’ privacy and data security at risk.”
Now, when asked about Apple’s decision in an interview at Forum Europe in Brussels, European Union Commission President Margrethe Vestager said: “Apple has said that they will not release new compliant features in an IRS environment, and they are not going to do so because of their European obligations. The obligation in Europe is to open up to competition, which is like a shortened version of the DMA.”
She also said she found it very interesting that “they’re saying they’re going to introduce AI into places where they have no obligation to enable competition. I think this is the most astonishing, overt declaration that they know 100% that this is just another way to disable competition in places where they already have an advantage.”
Apple is playing a clever game with the EU
While Apple does not have to offer in the EU all the features it offers in the US, it seems Cupertino is keen to show that DMA laws could be detrimental to customers, even though they have benefited international users with retro gaming emulators and game streaming apps.
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My understanding from Apple’s statement is that the company needs to offer Android Mirroring on Mac for EU users or open up Apple Intelligence to any developer with a law degree. But this is not true, and Apple knows it.
Just because they have Apple Music doesn’t mean they need Spotify pre-installed on every iPhone, nor does it mean that users need to store their online backups on Dropbox instead of iCloud to be “fair competition.” It seems to me that Apple doesn’t want to accept restrictions, which would only hurt their image in the region.
summary
iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing are available in iOS 18 Beta 2 and are available for testing by all developers in all regions except the EU. Apple Intelligence will be released alongside the public beta in early July, and it’s important to note that Apple’s AI will remain in beta even when the company releases the final version of iOS 18 this fall.
BGR will continue to track the latest developments surrounding Apple and the EU.
