A couple of days ago, European legislators approved the new Digital Markets Law (DMA, for its acronym in English) that will seek to curb the dominance of technology giants such as Google and Apple. With this new law, companies will be forced to open their services and platforms to other companies, and WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to include operations with much smaller messaging platforms.
Although there is no exact date for when this law could come into force, it is speculated that it would arrive around October of this year. At the moment it is known that Apple, which has not issued a statement, could be seriously affected, since this regulation It would change the entire model of the Apple App Store and force the apple company to allow sideloading, third-party app stores and other means of payment within iOS.
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“We believe that the owner of a smartphone should have the freedom to choose how to use it. This freedom includes being able to opt for alternative sources of apps on your smartphone. With the DMA, a smartphone owner could still enjoy safe and secure services from the default app store on their smartphones. On top of that, if a user so chooses, the DMA would allow a smartphone owner to also opt out of other secure app stores,” European Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke said in a statement.
It is true that this only becomes relevant in European countries; however, it is important to mention what it could cause to users from other countries.
A clear example is the rise in price of certain applications within the App Store, which could also harm their own devices, since those in Cupertino would be affected with millions of losses that they would try to recover in some other way.