{"id":459233,"date":"2026-07-08T14:23:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/07\/08\/il-tribunale-ue-conferma-apple-gatekeeper-per-app-store-e-ios\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T15:46:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T13:46:48","slug":"eu-court-upholds-apples-gatekeeper-status-for-the-app-store-and-ios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/07\/08\/eu-court-upholds-apples-gatekeeper-status-for-the-app-store-and-ios\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Court upholds Apple\u2019s gatekeeper status for the App Store and iOS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 Apple is a gatekeeper \u2013 that is, a major web platform that controls access to services \u2013 for the App Store, iOS and the Safari web browser. The General Court of the European Union today (8 July) rejected<\/a> the US giant\u2019s appeal against its designation as a gatekeeper by the European Commission and declared the appeals relating to the iMessage service inadmissible. Effectively, therefore, it upheld the EU executive’s assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The case<\/h4>\n

\n

On 5 September 2023<\/span>, the European Commission designated Apple as a gatekeeper for three of its services \u2013 the App Store, the iOS operating system and the Safari browser \u2013 pursuant to the Digital Markets Act <\/a>(DMA), <\/span>subjecting it to the obligations set out in EU legislation to \u201censure fair competition\u201d. Furthermore, the Commission had classified the iMessage service as a number-independent interpersonal communications
\nservice (NIICS) constituting a core platform service (CPS). <\/strong><\/span>In this context, Apple had brought an appeal<\/a> before the General Court of the European Union to challenge \u201cits designation as a gatekeeper for the App Store and iOS, as well as certain classifications adopted by the Commission\u201d and the decision concerning iMessage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s decision<\/h4>\n

\n

Today, the Court dismissed all appeals, confirming Apple\u2019s designation as a gatekeeper for the App Store and iOS, and declared the appeals relating to the iMessage service inadmissible. The Court ruled \u201cinadmissible the plea of illegality raised by Apple against the provision of the
\nDMA relating to the interoperability obligations imposed on undertakings which are designated as gatekeepers.\u201d The reason is that this provision “constitutes neither the legal basis of the designation decision nor a rule having a direct legal <\/span>connection with that decision.” Therefore, its alleged illegality cannot be pleaded in support of an application to have that decision annulled.<\/p>\n

The General Court also confirmed the Commission\u2019s assessment that the different versions of the App Store
\nconstitute a single CPS. Apple operates five software application stores \u2013 the iOS App Store, the iPadOS App Store, the watchOS App Store, the macOS App Store, and the tvOS App Store \u2013 and, according to the Court, \u201chave the same purpose, namely to
\nconnect app developers with end users in order to facilitate the distribution of software applications.\u201d By contrast, the company argued that each store constituted a distinct CPS. The company\u2019s intention was to ensure that only the iOS App Store could meet \u201cthe thresholds required to be designated as a gatekeeper\u201d and thus be subject to the obligations under the DMA. In the Court\u2019s view, however, the stores \u201crelate primarily to the specific
\ncharacteristics of the devices used and do not justify distinguishing between several core platform services.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, on the issue of whether iMessage qualifies as a NIICS constituting a CPS, the Court declared the company\u2019s appeal inadmissible because “that classification does not, by itself, produce binding legal effects that bring about a
\nchange in Apple\u2019s legal position.” In particular, \u201c<\/strong><\/span>none of the obligations laid down by the DMA apply to iMessage since
\nthat service has not been listed in a designation decision as an important gateway,<\/strong>\u201d the Court explained in a press release.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the appeals lodged by the platform have been dismissed. According to the judges, those relating to the iMessage service are \u201cinadmissible\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7908,"featured_media":459217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25710],"tags":[25871,34754,27115,27171,28829,34755,34756],"class_list":["post-459233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-net-tech-en","tag-agenda-digitale-ue","tag-apple-en-2","tag-dma-en","tag-tribunal-ue-en","tag-ricorso","tag-sentenza-apple"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459234,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459233\/revisions\/459234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}