Apple's iMessage Avoids EU's Digital Markets Act Regulation

contacos said:
"Europe" is not a country ;) guess I should have been more specific. Shops are not allowed to be open on Sundays here in Germany. WOLT for example is also not allowed to deliver groceries on Sundays. Only "Food deliveries" are allowed on Sundays. Poland and Austria are the same I think.
Click to expand...
After reading more about this. It seems the intent is close the super large chain stores of 3000 soft or more while small businesses below 3000 Sq ft can still open. The intent is to help small businesses to compete against the large corporations. Now, I have no idea if this law is effective or not. So your typical mom-pop shop shouldn't be impacted.
 
mrochester said:
They would regulate the manner in which Spotify could make deals with record labels and musicians/content creators so that Spotify can’t use its control of the market to dictate terms to the content creators.
Click to expand...

You assume that Spotify does that. Record labels have the power, above and beyond the streaming companies.

They are dictated to.
 
Sorinut said:
You assume that Spotify does that. Record labels have the power, above and beyond the streaming companies.

They are dictated to.
Click to expand...
I was just offering up a suggestion for how music streaming companies might be regulated. They would probably also have to make it so any playlists or personalised recommendations could be transported to another service, play count, play history etc.
 
robvalentine said:
IMessage seems to be a US only thing. in fact my phone tries so hard to force me onto imessage when sharing photos that it will only Show imessage for sharing pics with my gf, and occasionally I hit the imessage icon by accident instead of having to navigate to whatsapp and then my GF.

If only Whatsapp didn;t hamstring the quality of images as it works accross many platforms.
Click to expand...
Well the phone and entire company was invented in the US by Americans
 
hagar said:
And the EU, governing 448M people, disagrees with you. Because they rightfully determined some companies become so big there’s no free market anymore.
Click to expand...
Thankfully some parts of the world agrees with that philosophy. It’s already been said the thought process is “what’s yours is mine”.
 
I cannot comprehend being disappointed by this. But then, it isn’t within my personal values to desire the government to force companies to do things I would like.
 
Apple should now release imessage on Android for 9.99. They will make billions vs having to have it free of charge if the deal went through.

Sooner or later they will have to comply
 
I7guy said:
I maintain it’s apples right to lock down anything they want and the customers right not to buy a product that doesn’t meet their requirements.
Click to expand...

You can maintain that if you want, but any jurisdiction can regulate products and services sold in that jurisdiction however they see fit and, with that, we're back at square one.

Apple is only subject to EU regulations because they choose to operate there.
 
d686546s said:
You can maintain that if you want, but any jurisdiction can regulate products and services sold in that jurisdiction however they see fit and, with that, we're back at square one.

Apple is only subject to EU regulations because they choose to operate there.
Click to expand...
Sure. It doesn’t mean it’s a good law as I’ve repeatedly said for a variety of reasons.
 
Kingcoherent said:
But wouldn't RCS interoperability then mean they were compliant?
Click to expand...
No because the DMA mandate’s that your service is interoperable. RCS exists alongside iMessage as just another protocol (that and it‘s not easy to provide a RCS client, so barrier of entry is incredibly high).

The RCS announcement was clearly a play by Apple to soothe the EU, as evident by them shadow dropping the news on the very last day they could officially „make their case“ in terms of being labelled as a gatekeeper. I don‘t think they backtrack on their promise though, that would most definitely prompt EU attention.
 
Fabian90 said:
I hope that i can just use iMessage and RCS in the future and remove WhatsApp from my iPhone. Right now I HAVE to use WhatsApp because that's what almost everyone uses here in the EU.
Click to expand...

Agreed on this. While the EU is legislating collaboration, RCS is already headed there and will inevitably settle into the predominant messaging standard, just like SMS has been for decades. Apple can continue doing their own iMessage between iPhones while RCS will play the role that SMS does now but with the added ability to send large files, reactions, audio messaging, typing notification, large groups, and other rich messaging features.

As people start to see that texting will do what WhatsApp does, they'll gradually drop off and the need for WhatsApp or any non-native messaging app will disappear.
 
I7guy said:
Sure. It doesn’t mean it’s a good law as I’ve repeatedly said for a variety of reasons.
Click to expand...

That's your prerogative, but that's a different argument to the one you've been making there and in a few other places.

Apple, or any other company, simply doesn't have an unlimited right to manage their products however they want, neither in the EU nor in the US. It's a fact of life, generally a necessity for various reasons and not some kind of interference with a divine right.

I think it's fair and productive to discuss the merits of the DMA at length. I'm generally very supportive of its aims, but surely it's not a perfect law and it will unlikely achieve everything it's trying to do.

People are free to disagree with all of it, as long as we can all agree that it is really up to the EU to determine how companies should operate in its market. This is not exclusively or even predominantly directed at you, but there's always a strong 'how dare they tell an American company what to do' undercurrent in these threads and I find that tiresome.

Anyway, have a good one.
 
d686546s said:
That's your prerogative, but that's a different argument to the one you've been making there and in a few other places.

Apple, or any other company, simply doesn't have an unlimited right to manage their products however they want, neither in the EU nor in the US. It's a fact of life, generally a necessity for various reasons and not some kind of interference with a divine right.

I think it's fair and productive to discuss the merits of the DMA at length. I'm generally very supportive of its aims, but surely it's not a perfect law and it will unlikely achieve everything it's trying to do.

People are free to disagree with all of it, as long as we can all agree that it is really up to the EU to determine how companies should operate in its market. This is not exclusively or even predominantly directed at you, but there's always a strong 'how dare they tell an American company what to do' undercurrent in these threads and I find that tiresome.

Anyway, have a good one.
Click to expand...
I think I’ve been disagreeing with the laws for the right reasons and haven’t said otherwise.

I do agree companies should not be able to sell products or services which meet a certain negative threshold, but that’s where it ends.
 
I7guy said:
I think I’ve been disagreeing with the laws for the right reasons and haven’t said otherwise.

I do agree companies should not be able to sell products or services which meet a certain negative threshold, but that’s where it ends.
Click to expand...

And, in your view, who gets to set this negative threshold?

Edit: In addition, I don't think this is a realistic portrayal of how companies can design products and services even in the US. There's always some regulation that will affect product design. The rest is shades of grey.
 
What would be the point of having different messaging apps if they all work together? Just seems like a mess. We use LINE a lot in Japan. It has a wallet and you can send payments to other users. You could maybe get text or media messaging to work through iMessage or whatever Google has, but what about payments, stickers, or reactions? I'd personally love to be able to delete the LINE app, but I can't imagine Apple and Google being able to accomplish and maintain useful interoperability.
 
Will Co said:
My point was that the use of iMessage might increase because of RSC at the expense of WhatsApp. I only use WhatsApp to message and join groups that are cross platform. With RSC in place, I won't need WhatsApp. My usage of WhatsApp will go down (it will stop). iMessage might, in the EU's eyes, eventually become more important and therefore Apple eventually find themselves considered a gatekeeper.
Click to expand...
That doesn’t make sense. You’ve explained why we might see a decrease in use of WhatsApp and and increase in use of RCS, but not why there would be any increase in use of iMessage.

I think you’re misunderstanding what RCS is. When you send a message using RCS you are not using iMessage. When people switch from WhatsApp to RCS there is no increase in use of iMessage.

There would only be an increase in use of iMessage if either more people bought iPhones, or Apple made iMessage work on Android.
 
ipedro said:
Agreed on this. While the EU is legislating collaboration, RCS is already headed there and will inevitably settle into the predominant messaging standard, just like SMS has been for decades. Apple can continue doing their own iMessage between iPhones while RCS will play the role that SMS does now but with the added ability to send large files, reactions, audio messaging, typing notification, large groups, and other rich messaging features.

As people start to see that texting will do what WhatsApp does, they'll gradually drop off and the need for WhatsApp or any non-native messaging app will disappear.
Click to expand...
no one in europe is going to move off whatsapp for texting lol.
 
hagar said:
And the EU, governing 448M people, disagrees with you. Because they rightfully determined some companies become so big there’s no free market anymore.
Click to expand...

Which is fine, except the consumer winds up paying more for that approach.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top