The European Union continues to bring bad news to Apple, this time for the operating system iPadOS, which we can practically consider the twin of iOS, which, as you already know (and if not, you can easily deduce it thanks to its name) It is the operating system that gives life to the iPad . And as the European Commission said, iPadOS meets the “necessary conditions” to comply with what is required by the Digital Markets Act. I’ll explain the reason for the quotes later, as it’s not a literal quote.

As stated in the mentioned EC official communication, Attention was already drawn to iOS in September of last year, when six gatekeepers were published and the products and services of each would be subject to special treatment. It was also published at the time that Other investigations remained open on products and services with the possibility that they would also have to comply with the aforementioned regulations.

As we told you back thenAs for Apple, two investigations have been openedone for its services and applications iMessagewhich was ultimately saved from these regulatory measures, and iPadOSwhich we still didn’t know what direction the European Commission intends to take, because the numbers of this operating system are undoubtedly much lower than those of Android, iOS and Windows, which are the three OSes marked by DMA applications last September.

So, What happened? Why the quotes at the beginning? Well, from what we read in the EC statement on the matter. The first key point is as follows:

«[…] The Commission launched a market investigation to assess whether Apple’s iPadOS, although it does not meet the quantitative thresholds set in the Water Framework Directiverepresents an important gateway for professional users to reach end users and should therefore be designated as a gateway manager.»

And as you might have guessed, the result of the investigation is that there are indeed certain circumstances in which the iPad operating system must be subject to these regulations. The European organization lists three of them:

»

• Number of Apple business users exceeded the quantitative threshold eleven times, while number of end users was close to the threshold value and is expected to increase in the near future.
• End users are tied to iPadOS . Apple uses its large ecosystem to discourage end users from switching to other tablet operating systems.
• Business users are tied to iPadOS due to its large and commercially attractive user base and its importance for certain use cases such as gaming.

»

As a result of course European Commission gives Apple six months to adapt iPadOS DMAdecisions and deadlines similar to those proposed for iOS, although in this case it is true that Apple has already done a fair amount of work, since “only” (and I put it in quotes because I understand that it is a considerable amount of work) will have to port to the iPad version of the operating system what already exists in the European Union version of iOS.

This This is definitely not good news for Apple, although it is true that in recent months they have found a way to ensure that the adaptation to the new iOS standards does not mean as great a loss of profit as it might seem at first. Of course, even in this regard, it is possible that the European Commission will decide against it, because for some time it seems that the EU legislators and regulators are watching with special attention all the actions of those from Cupertino on the old continent.