Apple, Google mobile ecosystems face UK probe under new tech rules
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is investigating mobile ecosystems controlled by Apple and Alphabet’s Google to work out if they need to obey a strict new law governing digital competition. The CMA said Thursday the probes will assess the companies’ dominance in spaces like mobile phone operating systems, app stores and web browsers and explore their impact on smartphone users as well as developers that rely on those devices to make money.
If the investigations determine that the companies have what it calls ‘strategic market status,’ it can impose bespoke rules on them under the new law. This is the second round of investigations the watchdog has launched under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, a new U.K. law designed to curb the outsized market power of the world’s largest technology companies.
The law bans tech giants the CMA deems as having strategic market status in the digital economy from favoring their own products and services over those of rivals. The CMA’s started enforcing the new rules this year by opening an investigation into Google’s search services on Jan. 14.
An Apple spokesperson said the tech giant faces competition in every segment and jurisdiction where it operates and its priority is customers’ trust. “We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA as their work on this matter progresses," they said. Google said that it would work constructively with the CMA.
“We welcome the opportunity to set out Android, Chrome and Play’s support for users, businesses and the wider mobile ecosystem in the U.K.," the company wrote in a blog post on Thursday. The CMA said that roughly 15,000 businesses in the U.K. are involved in the
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