EC Designates Apple iPadOS as the Gatekeeper Under the DMA

The European Commission has designated Apple and its iPadOS, an operating system for tablets, as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act. Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations.

On 5 September 2023, the EC designated Apple as a gatekeeper for its operating system iOS, its browser Safari, and its App Store. On the same day, the Commission opened a market investigation to assess whether Apple's iPadOS, despite not meeting the quantitative thresholds laid down in the DMA, constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper.

The investigation found that Apple presents the features of a gatekeeper with iPadOS, as Apple's business user numbers exceeded the quantitative threshold elevenfold, while its end user numbers were close to the threshold and are predicted to rise in the near future. Also, the EC found that the end users are locked into iPadOS. Apple leverages its large ecosystem to disincentivize end users from switching to other operating systems for tablets. Business users are also locked into iPadOS because of its large and commercially attractive user base, and its importance for certain use cases, such as gaming apps.

Based on the findings of the investigation, the EC concluded that iPadOS constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and that Apple enjoys an entrenched and durable position for iPadOS. Apple has now six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations as applied to iPadOS.

“The Digital Markets Act is a dynamic tool which allows us to tackle the realities of digital markets. Today, we have brought Apple’s iPadOS within the scope of the DMA obligations. Our market investigation showed that despite not meeting the thresholds, iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers. Today’s decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform, in addition to the 22 other services we designated last September. Apple has six months to make iPadOS compliant with the DMA,“ said Margrethe Vestager, EC Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy.