Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Snailwang, soft media user 1520111 for clue delivery! CTOnews.com European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an antitrust legislation aimed at technology companies. The aim is to increase competition by eliminating some of the advantages that tech giants have.

Bloomberg reported that EU antitrust regulators have reached a preliminary conclusion that Apple iMessage is not popular enough among business users to be bound by the new rules.

European Commission officials are leaning toward leniency for Apple as part of a five-month market investigation that ends in February, according to people familiar with the matter.

While this may sound implausible to Americans, the truth is that WhatsApp is more popular in Europe than iMessage (CTOnews.com note: even many Apple users in Europe default to third-party apps such as WhatsApp).

In other words, the EU's antitrust investigation of iMessage will rule in favor of Apple. If the EU finally confirms, that would mean Apple doesn't have to let iMessage exchange messages with rival chat apps.

The EU has been working on new regulations under DMA that require Apple to tweak services like App Store, Apple Pay, Siri, FaceTime and iMessage, and force these big tech companies to open up services and platforms to other companies and developers.

In theory, DMA interoperability rules mean that apps like WhatsApp or Messenger can demand data interoperability with Apple iMessage, and Apple must comply with this rule if it wants to continue operating within the EU. However, this news shows that iMessage may not be within the scope of EU legislation, because it is not widely adopted by enterprises, so this is a good thing for Apple.

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