Apple to Delay Some Feature Rollouts in EU, Citing Regulatory Hurdles
A service which tracks and records where users have been won’t be rolled out in the EU
Apple AAPL -0.06%decrease; red down pointing triangle said it will delay offering some planned new features to users in the European Union this year because regulations are making it harder to bring them to market in the region.
The company’s lawyers said on Monday that tools such as a “visited places” service that tracks and records where users have been won’t be rolled out in the EU when it releases its iOS 26 software update later this year.
The iPhone maker has to comply with the Digital Markets Act, a EU law designed to curb the market power of the world’s largest technology companies and make it easier for smaller developers to do business online.
Apple has routinely criticized that law, saying it degrades the quality of its products, opens users up to privacy and security risks and makes rolling out new software features in Europe more complicated.
The European Commission told Apple earlier this year what it thinks the company should do to comply with the DMA’s rules around interoperability. That included obliging Apple to make it easier for smartwatch and headphone manufacturers to pair their products with Apple devices, improve user experience using that tech alongside an iPhone and give developers more access to Apple’s software.
“We’ve already had to make the decision to delay the release of products and features, we announced this month for our EU customers,” Kyle Andeer, Vice President, Apple Legal, told a workshop with EU officials and developers in Brussels. Users’ security could be compromised if the company is obliged to open up its ecosystem to competitors, Andeer said.
Apple said it is still analyzing features that may not be available in the EU and working to find solutions to deliver features as quickly as possible.
Andeer also criticized the DMA more broadly, saying that changes the company has had to make to bring its products in line with the rules since last year “create real privacy, security, safety risks to our users.”
An EU official at the meeting said the regulator and Apple are divided on the scope of the DMA and on potential security risks.