General Court dismisses several Apple complaints against Digital Markets Act
The EU’s lower court on Wednesday dismissed several appeals brought by US tech giant Apple against the bloc’s big tech rulebook, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
In its ruling, the General Court found that Apple is a gatekeeper in respect of its App Store and mobile operating system iOS – confirming a designation made by the European Commission back in September 2023 and affirming that the iPhone maker must abide by the DMA’s rules for its mobile platforms.
Apple filed the appeals in January 2024, also challenging the bloc’s treatment of its App Store as a single core platform service (CPS). Instead, it argued that each App Store is device-specific – contending that only its iOS App Store therefore met the DMA’s quantitative thresholds.
But the Court on Wednesday dismissed Apple’s argument, ruling that – irrespective of the device in question – the App Store had the “same purpose”: to connect app developers with Apple’s end users to distribute apps.
