EU to examine if Apple Ads and Maps subject to tough rules, Apple says no

Written by: Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators will review whether Apple’s Apple Ads and Apple Maps should be subject to onerous requirements of the bloc’s digital rules after both services meet basic criteria, with the U.S. tech giant saying they should be exempt.

Apple’s App Store, iOS operating system and Safari web browser were designated essential platform services two years ago under the Digital Markets Act, which aims to curb the power of Big Tech and open the field to competitors so consumers have more choice.

The European Commission said Apple had informed it that Apple Ads and Apple Maps met the two thresholds set by the Act to be considered a “gatekeeper”.

The DMA designates companies with services with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market value of 75 billion euros ($79 billion) as gatekeepers subject to a list of dos and don’ts.

The Commission has 45 business days to decide whether to grant such a designation to Apple’s maps and advertising services, and Apple is then given six months to comply.

In its response on Friday, Apple said it had submitted formal rebuttals to the EU competition enforcer.

The company said that Apple Ads is not a major player in the online advertising services market in the EU and has minimal share compared to competitors such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok or X, and that it does not use data from other Apple services or third-party services for this service.

Apple also noted that compared to other mapping services such as Google Maps and Waze, Maps has very limited usage in the EU and lacks critical intermediary functions that would allow it to connect business users and end users more directly.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro, Charlotte Van Campenhout and Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Alexander Smith and Tomasz Janowski)