verne arase

Kierkegaarden said:

How ironic.  The answer that this person provided is a “stunning declaration” of how anti-US tech the EU is. They realize that no real tech innovation comes out of the EU, which is embarrassing for them, so they instead want to push and regulate the US tech companies that want to operate within the EU. It seems to me what whatever Apple does, the EU will have a problem with it. They need to back off.

If you have no tech companies of your own - probably because you've regulated them to death - the way you profit from tech is by fining companies that come in and attempt to do business in your back yard.

Fining based on worldwide revenues is a nice touch - previously only attempted by the Chinese Communist Party.

gatorguy said:

You mean Spotify won't pay the artist and/or label, we'll assume Apple is one, for the licensed music? Of course they would.

Spotify to my knowledge pays artists the least per track played of all the streaming services. They've actually sued artists for asking for a bigger cut of the Spotify revenue pie.

Their biggest problem is they have a broken business model - they lose money for every free subscriber they add.

They add nothing to Apple's coffers despite using Apple's development tools and infrastructure, and they are constantly going to complain to mama (the EC).

To list them as one of the biggest European tech firms is telling - except maybe for ASML (who is not consumer facing).

gatorguy said:

Apple is not the only tech required to abide by the DMA as a condition of selling in the EU market. They are not being singled out with rules that apply only to them.

No one is saying that they are.

I'm sure that Apple isn't the only one sick of jumping through hoops for the European Commission.

(… and we wonder why there are so few European tech firms …)

VictorMortimer said:

Intentionally omitting features as retaliation?  Yeah, Apple is gonna LOVE the multi-billion fine for this little stunt.

The EU is done playing.  Apple will behave, or they will PAY.

Are you saying that Apple can be forced to offer a feature in Europe which would put them in violation of European regulations?

Given the European Commission's penchant for going after profits not even made in the European Union and their strange thoughts on anti-competitive behavior, Apple should not offer Apple Intelligence or any other feature which could get them in trouble with the Digital Markets Act.

The iPhone is neither designed nor manufactured in Europe, yet the EC feels it has a right to levy fines of 10% of worldwide revenues - 20% if they feel the company is in continued breech.

The EU sales account for some 7% of Apple's worldwide revenues, so if Apple feels it cannot bring themselves into compliance without developing software for the competition or breeching customer trust or changing their business model to comply with European regulations it would make more sense to withdraw from the European market and allow the most ardent Apple fans buy their wares from other regions on the grey market. At purchase time, if the customer's IP is from Europe, the customer would have to check a box at purchase time indemnifying Apple by agreeing to the terms that the item can be purchased but not used in Europe.

The European Union has become a very dangerous place to do business and the EC seems to believe themselves to be engineers able to dictate features and limitations - they essentially want to take over your designs and force you to cede your advantages to the competition.

As a minority Apple stockholder I feel that Apple may in the future have to withhold features or products from the European Union to preserve stockholder value.

If European customers have problems with that, they should take it up with the European Commission.