Platforms and Big Tech Tracker
Ex-ante Designations benchmark updated to reflect the UK CMA’s proposal to designate both Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems as having Strategic Market Status
We’ve updated the Ex-ante Designations benchmark within our Platforms and Big Tech Tracker to reflect the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s preliminary decision to designate Apple and Google as having Strategic Market Status (SMS) under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act. Through its dual investigation of the firms’ mobile ecosystems, the regulator provisionally found that both firms qualified as having a degree of entrenched market power in the operating system, app store, web browser and browser engine markets to require ex-ante regulation.
In its roadmap for priority interventions to consider in the coming months, the CMA describes its focus on ensuring the fair, objective and transparent distribution of apps through both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, as well as in guaranteeing greater interoperability for third parties through Apple’s iOS system. Notably, the regulator describes concerns regarding interoperability in the context of network slicing services, fairness in the distribution of eSIM services and transparency in regards to advanced privacy features such as Apple’s Private Relay as “potential” but yet unrealised risks and therefore deprioritises any action on these matters. This preliminary decision is the CMA’s second market investigation, the first being its provisional decision to designate Google in the search engine and search advertising markets. The regulator does not expect to open its third SMS investigation under the DMCC Act until at least 2026, despite having planned to do so this year.
The CMA is the second regulator to consider Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems under digital competition frameworks. The EC designated both firms’ app stores, web browsers and operating systems as core platform services under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in July 2023. Following these designations, the EC opened three noncompliance investigations into the elements of these mobile ecosystems, having closed one into Apple’s App Store issuing a €500m (£427m) fine to the firm for noncompliance while the other two remain ongoing. According to our Antitrust Investigations benchmark, Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems have now been the subject of at least 23 ex-post competition investigations in 14 different jurisdictions. Both firms have now paid a combined £2.3bn in fines related to these ex-post enforcement actions involving anticompetitive conduct in mobile ecosystems.
