EU Court Confirms Apple’s DMA Gatekeeper Status

Europe has periodically used competition law to pry open dominant communication networks—think of the 1956 U.S. AT&T consent decree forcing Western Electric divestments, or the 1998 U.S. v. Microsoft case that compelled browser choice. The General Court’s ruling slots into that century-long pattern of governments intervening when a single conduit—whether a copper line, an operating system, or an app store—becomes the de-facto toll road to consumers. The DMA is less about any one company and more about the EU’s decades-long project of digital sovereignty that began with GSM standardisation in the 1980s and GDPR in 2018: Brussels wants rule-setting power equal to U.S. corporate power. If Apple ultimately has to allow rival app markets and payment rails, it could re-shape revenue models across mobile software the way the 1984 breakup of AT&T spawned new long-distance competitors. A century from now, this moment may be viewed as a hinge where the West formalised structural limits on platform monopolies—unless, as some critics warn, regulatory overreach merely pushes innovation and capital to less regulated regions.