Apple, Google face UK antitrust scrutiny over mobile ecosystems

LONDON: Britain’s competition regulator said it plans to designate Apple and Google with so-called strategic market status for their role in mobile ecosystems, as it steps up scrutiny of what it has described as their duopoly.

The plans announced on Wednesday follows findings by an inquiry group at Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that a number of markets relating to mobile internet browsers were not working well for consumers or businesses.

Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome dominate the mobile browser market on iPhones and Android devices, respectively.

A strategic market status (SMS) designation allows the CMA to impose interventions on a firm, such as requiring it to adhere to specific behaviour so as not to undermine fair competition.

In Apple and Google’s cases, they could be forced to offer more features and give users the option actively to choose their preferred mobile browser, if recommendations from the CMA’s inquiry group are accepted.

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Both Apple and Google pushed back against the CMA’s proposals, with Google calling the step “disappointing and unwarranted.”

“It is … crucial that any new regulation is evidence-based, proportionate and does not become a roadblock to growth in the UK,” Google’s senior director for competition, Oliver Bethell, said.

Apple said separately it was concerned that the new rules being considered would undermine the privacy and security protections expected by its users.