Which is fine as well if that's really the case (which I don't think it is, Europe apparently makes up ~1/3 of Apple's total Airpods revenue).
If they refrain from distorting the market in their favor (and instead "retreat and rally up the userbase") the DMA seems to work surprisingly well so far...
The procedures with the EU are quite interesting here, Apple was exchanging extensively for more than a year on how to reach compliance, then the decision [0] was made.
There are also separate procedures for the specification of compliance and investigating (non)compliance.
This gives Apple little room to argue on violation of the DMA later-on, because they were actively involved in defining the criteria beforehand.
So it's possible that they currently just need to find a mode to achieve launch-parity for EU on such features, and they're not there yet.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
Saying that the DMA is working well by reducing the features available to users with no apparent upside is a tough sell.
Quite a few upsides.
There are a few clear precedents where Apple held a feature back in the EU, then shipped later and/or exposed a path others could plug into:
Apple Intelligence: Announced as “not at launch” in the EU in 2024, then rolled out to EU users with iOS 18.4 in spring 2025 (most features). One carve-out remains: Live Translation with AirPods
NFC access for third-party wallets (HCE): After an EU antitrust case, Apple committed to open iPhone NFC (“tap-to-pay”) via Host Card Emulation, let users set a default non-Apple wallet, support Field Detect/Double-click flows, etc., so a genuine “build a platform others can plug into.” The Commission made these commitments legally binding for 10 years.
With iOS 17.4 Apple created EU-only entitlements for non-WebKit engines (e.g., full Chromium/Gecko), so browser makers can ship their own engines on iPhone/iPad in the EU.
Home-screen web apps (PWAs) reversal: Apple initially said PWAs would go away in the EU for 17.4, then reversed and kept them—implemented on WebKit with the usual security model.
Alternative app distribution (marketplaces + web distribution): In response to the DMA, Apple shipped EU-only APIs/entitlements for third-party app marketplaces and later web distribution (direct from developer sites) with notarization, installation, backup/restore hooks, etc.
Tap to Pay on iPhone (SoftPOS): Apple’s merchant “no extra hardware” payments feature expanded across EU countries and is designed for platforms like Adyen/Stripe/Mollie to integrate via SDKs
The fact is adapting a service to provide and support a generic API for the long term that others can hook into is extra work, compared to a private API tailored to their own hardware and that they can change whenever they like. It may be they could provide this as an open service in future.
On the other hand, what is to prevent another ear bud manufacturer writing an iPhone app their ear buds connects to that provides translation? Is this really a hardware feature in the phone? If it’s just software at the phone end, as long as other manufacturers have the feature access to implement this themselves, surely that’s their problem? Why should apple offer translation software as a service to other companies for free? I can see the argument for hardware but not software that others could implement themselves on iPhones.
None of those are new features out since the DMA.
The only one clearly DMA related with EU specific unlocks are:
* app store
* browser engines
The DMA could have been just an app store regulation. It seems to have had its intended effect there. Very very unproven outside of it. At best you've shown no harm other than delay in some areas.
I'm assuming NFC lawsuits are separate from the DMA but could be mistaken. But in any event NFC payments already existed and aren't a new feature apple decided to release under the DMA.
This is a play of Apple here, trying to spin the narrative in its favor.
The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device.
The upside for the market is that all vendors are technically able to compete on the same terms. Apple is not allowed to operate a market, invite others to compete but also participate as a player with preferential treatment.
This is already decided for the existing features of Airpods, Apple Watch, etc. Apple is trying to rally its userbase against the EU by withholding new features now, in hopes that they can secure their skewed playing-field
> The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device.
That is the dream of the dma. It has not been proven to be the reality.
The reality could very well be that EU users just don’t get features. Apple doesn’t have to play ball.
And that’s fine. If they don’t want to follow the rules they can’t release the thingy.
The upside is that the market for headphones is more competitive because apple cannot use its control over the iphone to muscle competitors in the headphone market.
The goal is to make consumers better off, not just to have a competitive market. There's a lot of ways to make markets more competitive that don't result in better value for consumers, and I'd argue that this is one of them.
In the short term, specifically because of Apple's malicious compliance. In the long term, a more competitive market results in better off consumers.
But no, the goal is not to make consumers better off, but citizens and nations better off. And their interests do not stop at $PRODUCT. Namely, they probably don't want a slow slide into serfdom to foreign corporations that abused their market power.
> Which is fine as well if that's really the case (which I don't think it is, Europe apparently makes up ~1/3 of Apple's total Airpods revenue).
So your belief is that, if DMA didn't exist, Apple still would not ship this feature in the EU?
I don't know how you reached that conclusion, sorry.
It's fine if Apple decided to refrain from its anti-competitive behavior in the headphone market because it's not economically viable to have this feature as a generic OS feature.
They know best and are free to do that.
I find your views alien and strange (and vaguely upsetting, because they negatively impact the entire world)
There are huge hosts of software and hardware that work better because of an ecosystem of interoperable components. That’s not anticompetitive, it’s the benefit of good design with compounding returns.
As the manufacturing process and software becomes less complicated, there is a natural trend towards budget competitors (see: SaaS in 2025) that can replicate functionality they know has a market.
The idea that making it unappealing to make an integrated product is good for consumers — or anticompetitive — seems so wrong that it’s farcical. There are definitely cases where verticalization can harm consumers, but this opens the space for good competition. Perplexity wouldn’t exist if Google actually cared about search customers. Internet Explorer didn’t have to be regulated out of existence — by virtue of sucking, there is opportunity.
Apple is free to do as many interoperable components or integrated products as they please. The DMA doesn't define ANY such restriction.
What they CAN'T do is maintain an environment where their products cannot be met with fair competition by other players, by intentionally giving advantages in the ecosystem only to their own brands.
Apple might not dominate the market for fitness trackers above 150USD today if they wouldn't have prevented others to achieve the same interoperability with their iOS ecosystem.
Apples featureset for wellness tracking was not competitive, neither in function nor in price. Fitbit and Garmin were better in doing that task, but they were not able to display message notifications, apps, etc. because the required interfaces in iOS were only available to Apple's Watch.
Maybe Apple would have beaten them in 2nd Gen, maybe competitors would have followed with equally tight iOS-interoperability in 2nd Gen.
Maybe Apple Watch would nonetheless be the leading Smartwatch in the market today. Or maybe it would be e.g. the Moto360 (google it) just due to Apple's "virtue of sucking" and insistence of doing rectangular watches.
We don't know, because none of the other players are able to compete on fair terms with Apple in this segment until today. And today Apple has such a leap-start that it's questionable whether this can still be rectified.