iMessage and other popular apps saved from blow by European regulators

A few days ago we told you that whatsapp It will have to be opened for third-party applications within a few weeks, namely until March 6 next year. And the Digital Services Act, also known as the DMA, forces services that are relevant in the market and have a significant enough share to open up to these third applications precisely to stimulate competition. But now we’ve learned that some popular platforms are finally getting rid of these rules.

Apple’s messaging app saved

We were convinced that the Apple app would suffer the same fate as WhatsApp and others. In fact, we were also among those who thought that Cupertino would also have to open up to third-party applications from next March. But in the end this won’t be the case because European Union through its commission and as a result of the investigation conducted solely on this matter, it was concluded that certain services would not be required to comply with this new provision.

Apart from iMessages, the iPhone messaging app, they also store Microsoft Edge browser, Bing search engine, or advertising platform.. This means that they can continue to operate as usual without introducing mechanisms to ensure compatibility between different similar platforms. And it seems that the decision to exclude these platforms was made based on their real importance in the European market. And if we limit ourselves to instant messaging, there will be big differences in popularity between, for example, iMessage and WhatsApp.

Although the first is a residual service on our continent, The meta application is practically the only one that is used on a large scale., and its market share is clearly higher than its competitors. The same thing happens with the Edge browser, which is much less used than Chrome and has an almost incredible market share. It therefore appears that the European Commission’s decision was based primarily on whether the platform or application in question could occupy a certain monopoly position, and clearly this is not the case with the ones we have mentioned.

Another thing what happened to Apple with iOS, its operating system and, most of all, the App Store, the iPhone store. It is not exempt from regulation and should be open next March for apps to be downloaded and installed on the iPhone without having to go through its store. This decision now made regarding DMA was made based on the popularity of the excluded services.

Although personally I don’t know how fair it is that this only applies to platforms based on their popularity. It would be wise to get a response from the platforms that are required to comply with this new legislation, even challenging it in court. The truth is that both Microsoft How Manzana They’ve already taken steps to open up their apps and platforms, even with the adoption of the Google-protected RCS standard in iMessage itself.