Analysis Apple has agreed to change the way it implements choice screens and browser features in its web browsers to comply with Europe's antitrust law, the Digital Markets Act.
The change, which is limited to iOS and iPadOS users in the 27 EU member states, comes after the European Commission decided in March to open an investigation into Apple's compliance with competition laws.
Open Web Advocacy (OWA), a group formed to advance the interests of web developers, welcomed Apple's concessions, noting that the iPhone maker has adopted six of the 11 recommendations to meet DMA requirements.
Additionally, Apple has removed what OWA characterized as “two serious and deliberately deceptive patterns” that disadvantaged competing browsers. One of these patterns hid the option to change the default browser if Safari was set as the default. The other triggered the browser selection screen only if Safari was not the default browser. This is good news for European users.
Users want choice, and it should be their choice which browser to use.
“We're pleased to see that Apple is providing EU users with an easy-to-use selection screen for their browser options, and that the options are offered on a fair and non-discriminatory basis (without fees),” Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave Software, which makes the open-source web browser Brave, said in an email to The Register.
“Users want choice, and it should be their choice which browser to use. Providing choice is in browser companies' interest too, as it's essential for the web to remain open, user-first, and competitive. We saw this recently in March, following the implementation of the DMA and the release of iOS 17.4, when daily installs of Brave on iOS in the EU increased by 50% due to the new browser choice panel.”
Progress is welcome, but further challenges remain
In the midst of widespread attempts to dismantle the rules of Apple's iOS platform through antitrust lawsuits and lobbying with regulators since Epic Games sued Apple in 2020, Apple has argued that web apps are viable competitors to native iOS apps. In other words, Apple is arguing that people will always be able to build and run browser-based apps on Apple devices, regardless of whether it controls the iOS software world.
But web developers have long argued that web apps on iOS are hampered by technical limitations.
Those restrictions are beginning to be lifted along with other restrictions from Apple, including a contractual rule that bars third-party developers from informing users of their apps about outside payment options, which is now permitted but would cost Cupertino a 27 percent commission (12 percent for Small Business Program participants) if they took that route.
That said, there remain many barriers, both at a technical level and in terms of visibility, that prevent web apps from being truly competitive with native apps. Five of the OWA recommendations have yet to be implemented, perhaps the most significant of which is requiring in-app browsers (web functionality built into native iOS apps) to use the default browser of choice rather than Apple's Safari.
“These changes only apply to the EU,” OWA said in a blog post. “Apple users in other countries will not directly benefit from these remedies. We urge regulators in other countries to carefully consider these changes and consider compelling Apple to implement them in their jurisdictions.”
We are hopeful that software developers from other jurisdictions will be able to access the options open to them in Europe, but we are not getting our hopes up.
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority has been investigating mobile browsers and cloud gaming since June 2022. Apple managed to temporarily halt the investigation, but the Competition and Markets Authority appealed and won, causing the investigation to be reopened.
The CMA published a set of potential remedies (PDF) to address competitive concerns around browser and cloud gaming on August 8. However, concerns remain in the web community that the CMA will not be able to force Apple to take the steps necessary to put web apps on an equal footing with native apps.
This week, the CMA dropped two long-running investigations into Google and Apple's official app stores. The watchdog had been looking into whether the marketplace rules were unfair to software makers. The CMA said it may continue to investigate the two US companies using new powers given to it by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act, which became law in Britain in May.
“The fix is great, thanks CMA,” Bruce Lawson, a web developer and one of the founders of OWA, wrote on Thursday in response to the UK watchdog's proposed improvements for browsers and games.
“But I am concerned that they may not be strong enough or specific enough to avoid Apple's bad-faith compliance in circumventing digital market law in the EU.”
Lawson, who left OWA's board in June to join browser maker Vivaldi, would like to see Apple do a few more things, noting for one that there's no guarantee that web apps will run in the browser engine you download.
“Web apps” in this context refers to what Apple calls home screen apps and what others call Progressive Web Apps or PWAs. These web-based applications can be installed on mobile devices and can interact with the hardware to take advantage of features like browser storage, push notifications, icon badges, device APIs, and more. As such, these web apps should behave in many ways like native mobile applications, and because they can be installed, they should always appear the same to users of mobile devices.
However, on iOS, these web apps run on Apple's WebKit engine, even if the user has selected another browser as their default, such as Brave, Chrome, Firefox, or Vivaldi, and WebKit does not allow web apps to use Bluetooth, so they cannot compete on an equal footing with native iOS apps that use Bluetooth.
“Apple is a master of malicious compliance and will likely argue that it can satisfy the CMA's remedies by allowing the browser to use its own engine and allowing access to the Share menu and the installation of Apple's WebKit-implemented web apps,” Lawson said.
“This is indeed the status quo in the EU: Apple tried to completely exclude PWAs (which they call 'home screen apps') in Safari so that they wouldn't have to allow them in other engines. After a campaign by EU web developers, Apple backed down, but (for now at least) all PWAs on iOS will remain constrained by running on WebKit.”
Lawson argues that the CMA's potential remedy — “granting browsers using alternative browser engines equal access to the APIs used by WebKit and Safari” — is not enough, because WebKit and Safari have not been granted the privileges available to native apps. He argues that the CMA should instead mandate that “all APIs and device integrations available to native iOS apps, and Apple's own apps and services, must be available to third-party browsers.”
The Register questioned the CMA about concerns that browser intervention would not address the web app issue. The CMA set out remediation option A1-3, which aims to:
(a) enables browsers running on iOS to use browser engines other than WebKit when appropriate, and provides access to the functionality required to do so, and (b) provides equivalent access to core features and functionality that Safari has access to, as well as the ability to configure and customize those features.
This potential remedy was said to be aimed at establishing competition at the browser engine level, meaning that if one browser engine cannot support a particular feature, browser vendors would be able to choose an alternative engine.
If so, it remains to be seen how Apple will implement this requirement.
