From techcrunch.com
The European Union will apply its flagship market fairness and contestability rules to Apple’s iPadOS, the Commission announced today — expanding the number of Apple-owned platforms regulated under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to four and amping up regulatory risk for the tech giant by bringing its tablet ecosystem in scope.
Apple has six months to ensure iPadOS is compliant with the DMA.
The development could force significant changes on how it operates the tablet platform in the EU as Apple will have to ensure it’s complying with a sweep of DMA mandates, such as a ban on so-called “gatekeepers” being able to self-preference their own services and requirements to allow third party app stores, the sideloading of apps and support for third party payment options.
Apple will also need to open up access to non-WebKit versions of Safari to iPadOS in the next six months, as it has already done on iOS in another DMA compliance step. While business users reaching customers via the tablet platform will have a legal right to FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.