Italy’s competition authority has opened an investigation into Apple over its cloud services, examined under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. The move places Apple’s cloud business under a regulator that has already become one of the company’s more persistent adversaries in Europe.
The Digital Markets Act is the framework doing the work here. The EU’s flagship competition law designates the largest platforms as “gatekeepers” and imposes obligations on how they treat rivals and customers, and it gives national authorities such as Italy’s AGCM a role in enforcement alongside the European Commission.
A probe brought under it signals that the regulator is examining whether Apple’s conduct in cloud services meets the law’s requirements.
What the investigation alleges in detail was not fully set out in the initial reporting, and the specifics will shape how serious it proves. The general shape of DMA cases against Apple has concerned the terms it sets for third parties and the degree to which it advantages its own services, and a cloud-focused inquiry would most plausibly turn on questions of that kind.
Until the authority lays out its theory, the precise concern is best treated as not yet public.
