The European Commission on Monday designated iPadOS, Apple's operating system for tablets, as a "gatekeeper" under the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). In September last year, the Commission designated Apple as a "gatekeeper" for its operating system iOS, its browser Safari, and its App Store.
It also opened a market investigation to evaluate whether Apple's iPadOS constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and therefore should be designated as a gatekeeper.
This investigation has now ended and found that Apple "presents the features of a gatekeeper in relation to iPadOS". "On the basis of the findings of the investigation, the Commission concluded that iPadOS constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users and that Apple enjoys an entrenched and durable position with respect to iPadOS," the EU said. "Apple has now six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations as applied to iPadOS," it added.
The Commission named Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft as gatekeepers, and each had to completely comply with all DMA obligations by March 7. "Today we conclude the first market investigation for qualitative designation under the DMA finding that also iPadOS is an important gateway for businesses to reach consumers," Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said.