I don't see why that is a problem either. 3rd party PlayStation controllers work just as well the official ones.
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iPad Accessory Integration Becomes the EU's Next Regulatory Feud With Apple
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That figure is for "Europe," which includes many countries that aren't in the EU, including the UK, which certainly accounts for a significant portion of that total (also Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Turkey, all of the Middle East, and parts of Africa). Most likely the EU accounts for about half that, or 13% (max) of Apple's total revenue.
Considering DMA fines could reach as high as 20% of Apple's global sales, it could absolutely be justified for Apple to pull out of the bloc.
If you could only use the Magic Mouse with Apple products I am sure there would be many, many people in uproar.
3rd party accessories that work with as many features as official ones are not the work of the devil.
Except if Apple is prohibited from differentiating their products on features, what's their incentive to continue developing those features?
By 'cave' you mean abiding by law as set out or face an import and sales ban across Europe set by the EU administration. And lose literally billions in profit that they'll have to explain to the share holders.. oh and receive a substantial fine from the EU too for none compliance.
Some of them may also be Patent trolls, it isn't just a US problem.
Some of the purchasing has to do with financials of licensing essential patents for future products and such. In many cases large entities are forced, or incentivized to purchase entire companies to have access to a patent they want or need.
EU companies also buy smaller entities to build patent profiles. ARM has a storied history of doing this, and we are seeing EU automakers buying smaller tech companies to support electrification, or in-car electronics efforts.
I find this an odd one, because Apples device integration comes down to hardware just as much as software.. are the EU implying Apple should work with all their third parties to dictate the design of their products so they integrate better with them?
The Magic Mouse says hello.
The EU are making sure that platforms have an open market for hardware and software sales. This has been the basis for free-market capitalism for over a century. The prior EEC standardised things like GSM and SCART to ensure easier trade between countries and less competing standards. Anybody want to go back to serial ports?
In Apple's case they leverage their position as first party to give their own products features 3rd parties cannot access without reverse engineering. The world we live in was built on open standards. Any PS5 controller works with any PS5. Any HDMI output can work with any display. Any bluetooth headphones work with any bluetooth device.
Competition for customers drives up the quality of products and drives down the cost. I don't get why some Apple fans are seemingly against pro-consumer intervention on behalf of democratically elected governments to make sure all companies play by the same rules. Or lets put it another way: that lack of innovation everybody moans at Apple for having isn't down to a lack of imagination: its down to a lack of competition.
Monopolies breed stagnation. Without it Apple risks becoming the next Intel when something better captures the public mindshare.
I don't see Apple leaving the EU either. Though I would not be surprised if additional new products or services simply are not offered there due regulatory concerns.
Yes, losing 25% of their global revenue.
That makes a lot of sense.
Apple Statistics — Users, Devices, and Revenue (2025)
Apple in 2025: 2.2B active devices, $383B annual revenue, 17% smartphone market share, 3.84M App Store apps, 89.8M Apple Music subscribers.backlinko.com
The EU is not Europe.
I wish that they divided down the statistics to show EU only.
I'm sure the percentage is high but it's most likely not even close to 25%.
What the EC seems to be proposing is that Apple cannot take advantage of their product integration to offer compelling features, e.g. quick pairing of AirPods and iCloud syncing. If that happens, Apple has no incentive to spend time and money developing features that their competitors can immediately capitalize on and integrate. As it stands, Apple typically does allow third parties to implement their proprietary features after a few years, e.g. iOS 18's support for quick pairing third-party BT accessories.
I've been saying this ever since the USB-C mandate came down and posting on this site about it. The camel's nose got under the tent and now it's almost all the way in.
Yes, losing 25% of their global revenue.
That makes a lot of sense.
Apple Statistics — Users, Devices, and Revenue (2025)
Apple in 2025: 2.2B active devices, $383B annual revenue, 17% smartphone market share, 3.84M App Store apps, 89.8M Apple Music subscribers.
The EU does not account for 25% of Apple's global revenue.
Do they want Apple to quit selling the Apple Pencil in Europe? Because that’s how you get Apple to quit selling the Apple Pencil in Europe.
The EU’s dumb attempt to over-legislate is only making things worse for European citizens.
The EU’s dumb attempt to over-legislate is only making things worse for European citizens.
The are not acting like gatekeeper, they ARE literally the gatekeepers who protect their citizens from corporations doing whatever they want to do.
If apple left the EU, which it should do, apple wouldn't lose any sales. People would buy elsewhere and bring apple devices in. An entire black market and / or personal carrier service industry would spring up overnight. In regards to services, VPN usage would skyrocket. The old adage, where there's demand, supply will be met, comes to mind.
They are not stopping Apple from vertically integrating their own devices and accessories. They are asking Apple to allow 3rd party devices the same privileges they give their own accessories.
Apple ecosystem experience stays the same.
3rd party ecosystem integration gets better.
Buy Android is a silly argument. I want an iPad but also shouldn't have to buy Apple Pencil to have tightly integrated features that a similar $20 pencil can give if Apple allows that level of integration.
It's about the Apple watches, Apple Pencils etc. Those have a certain level of integration Apple does not allow 3rd party devices to have.
No you cannot make everything open unless EU passed law to no longer protect patents and companies cannot have business secrets and technologies must be open source.
The problem is always where to draw this line and "what" for competition. And what EU has done on this has gone way too much.
There is no argue that the App store is monopoly because that is the only official way to install apps, but the accessory is a whole different story. Apple does not prevent you to pair third party Bluetooth headphones, nor blocks random USB accessories like they used to on iPhones. They even provided driverkit port to iPadOS so accessory vendors can even write user space drivers for the USB/Thunderbolt accessories. Apple is not blocking third party accessories like they did with App Store here.
And the argument about making some helper functions so that first party accessories looks better kills competition also looks funny to me. I have seen people buying AirPods to be used with Android phones because its great ANC capabilities, yet Android software works like s**t with AirPods that you cannot even change the mode change behavior on Android phones. Should Android provide software updates so that AirPods works as good as on the iPhones as well because "Android is gatekeeping to make AirPods works bad on their phones"?
Also, I have to point out that the most competitive 3rd party accessories on amazon is probably form random Chinese company and not from EU accessory vendors. They sell accessories at a fraction of the price of Apple's own ones and nobody would mind it does not support fancy UI windows on paring. Does this count as competition and "drives down the cost" to you?
The only thing I see here is that the EU failed to become competitive and they don't allow others to be more competitive.
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I don't have a source, but I have been asking for months why the percentage of App Store revenue be any different than the percentage of iPhone revenue in the EU and no one has given me an answer. Why on earth would percentage of App Store revenue be meaningfully different? Seems like if the EU makes up 7% of App Store revenue they'd also make up around 7% of iPhone revenue, but I'd honestly appreciate a reason why that is a bad assumption. The best answer I've gotten so far is "EU users probably buy fewer Apps than American users" but no citation when I asked.
As another point in favor it for being significantly lower than the 22% of "Europe", we know Apple's two largest revenue drivers in the "Europe" segment are outside of the EU (UK and India). Germany and France are next.
We can also do some math based on 2023 iPhone revenue:
Apple made roughly $200 billion worth of revenue from iPhone in 2023. Apple doesn't break out iPhone sales by region, but I've seen an estimate of ~$40 billion thrown out repeatedly. However, let's just assume that it's the same 22% of global revenue that the "Europe" market segment makes up. 22% of $200 billion is $44 billion.
- Apple is estimated to have made ~$10 billion (5%) of iPhone revenue in the UK (estimate of 8.4 million iPhones sold in UK, assuming average price of £899/$1150) and $5 billion (2.5%) in India (note the India number is conservative, per the article linked above, India accounted for 4% of iPhone revenue in Q2 2023). So right there the rest of the European market segment is down to $29 billion, or 14.5% of global iPhone revenue.
- The Middle East is estimated to account for around $5.6 billion (~3%) of iPhone revenue (5.6 million phones, assuming $999 average price). My link there says it does not include Turkey, and I'm unclear if it includes Israel, but for "being conservative" purposes we'll count both Turkey and Israel in the $5.6 billion. So now the European Market segment is down to $23.4 billion, or a little under 12% of global iPhone revenue.
- Now let's factor in Africa and non-EU countries not previously accounted for - harder to estimate here, as there aren't clear figures I can find. So I'll give them ALL to the EU.
Again, Apple isn't going to pull out of the EU unless the EU does something very stupid like mandating encryption backdoors, and even then I don't know that they do.
Personally I don't care so much for the pencil integration since I don't use it much if at all. One area where I would appreciate it if third-party vendors had better ways to integrate with iOS though are headphones. Not everyone is happy with what Apple has to offer, and I don't see a reason why third party headphone should not be able to work the same way as Apple's do.
Probably -not definitely- a small part of the tech a company develops or holds patents to on some regions, or something very similar, is there. But these companies are bought worldwide, not only in the EU because of their IPs portfolio, precisely to avoid regional legal patent battles.