EU court confirms Apple as digital gatekeeper, dismissing its DMA challenge

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The EU General Court on Wednesday dismissed Apple’s challenge against how it was designated under the bloc’s Big Tech rules, handing the European Commission a significant victory in one of the first major judicial tests of the law.

In a trio of rulings delivered jointly, the Luxembourg-based court confirmed Apple’s designation as a gatekeeper — a firm that controls critical bottlenecks in digital markets — under the Digital Markets Act for the App Store and iOS in full. It also ruled the company’s challenges over its iMessage service inadmissible.

The rulings by the EU’s second-highest court mark the latest chapter in an escalating legal confrontation between Apple and Brussels over the DMA, the law the EU has cast as its most ambitious attempt to rebalance power between Big Tech and the rest of the digital economy.

Apple, which has filed five separate legal challenges against the Commission under the regulation, is among the most litigious of the designated gatekeepers.

The court threw out Apple’s argument that the DMA’s interoperability obligations violated its fundamental rights without ruling on the substance, finding the provision had no direct legal connection to the designation decision.

It also rejected Apple’s bid to have its five App Stores treated as separate services. The stores — covering iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple TV — all serve the same purpose of connecting developers with end users regardless of the device, the court found.

Responding to the ruling, Apple said it still believed the DMA goes too far, but declined to say whether it planned to appeal.

“We firmly believe the DMA’s mandate goes beyond what is lawful and proportionate, threatening to erode decades of privacy and security protections we’ve built and leaving our users vulnerable to new risks,” an Apple spokesperson said. “We will continue advocating for the innovation and privacy our European customers deserve.”

Increasingly fraught

The relationship between Apple and Brussels has grown increasingly fraught. The two sides clashed publicly last month after Apple said the DMA’s rules had prevented it from launching its upgraded Siri AI assistant in the EU, leaving users in the bloc cut off from the service.

The dispute was followed by a July 1 video call between Apple CEO Tim Cook and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen that the Commission described as “constructive.”

Two Apple cases remain pending: a challenge to the Commission’s March 2025 decision requiring Apple to open iOS to third-party developers, and an appeal against the €500 million fine imposed in April 2025 for anti-steering violations.

Wednesday’s ruling follows the General Court’s partial annulment of Meta’s gatekeeper designation last month and a 2024 judgment dismissing ByteDance’s challenge in full.

Apple was designated as a gatekeeper in September 2023, covering iOS, the App Store and Safari.

The U.S. tech giant had challenged the designation because interoperability obligations imposed on iOS violated its fundamental rights, and that the Commission had wrongly treated its five App Stores as a single platform service.