Context: Apple is fighting the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) tooth and nail. A set of new App Store rules just for the EU is not going to truly open up the market for iOS app distribution (February 2, 2024 games fray article). Apple is also refusing to comply with respect to any variant of the App Store other than the one for iOS.
What’s new: Earlier this month, reports surfaced (Open Web Advocacy, MacRumors) that the latest beta version of Apple’s iOS operating system treats Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) differently in the EU from other jurisdictions, but not in terms of enabling more competition: much to the contrary, Apple purposely torpedoes web apps in the EU (and only in the EU), with browser-based games being the primary though not exclusive category of victims.
Direct impact: Theoretically, Apple could still re-enable PWAs in the EU before it declares the next version of iOS final. A beta version is not a final version. But games fray‘s analysis shows that this behavior by iOS is highly unlikely to be a bug, as it is clear what strategic goals Apple is pursuing for monetary gain and for maximum control over whatever happens on the iOS platform. It is also transparent how Apple would seek to defend this conduct in the event of an enforcement challenge.
Wider ramifications: Too few people may have realized that what Apple is doing with respect to web apps in the EU reveals a far more problematic attitude than its new EU-specific App Store rules (which are troubling enough). Apple adds insult to injury, and doesn’t even refrain from deliberately harming end users, which is a unique aspect of its PWA-related action and not the case for the App Store rules, which merely seek to cement the status quo. In the end, this means any tech laws or court-ordered remedies meant to force Apple to open up must be designed with a company in mind that won’t stop short of acting disdainfully and depriving its own customers of functionality. Tech policy makers will have to consider Most Favored Nations rules and other measures to combat that type of conduct.
Steve Jobs’ original idea was that the only kind of third-party app to be allowed to run on the iPhone would be web apps. That’s how the iPhone launched: only Apple itself was able to make native apps (executable files as opposed to HTML pages).
When the App Store launched the following year, Apple’s thinking was still that no one should complain if certain categories of apps were not allowed: there was always the alternative of making a web app instead of a native app.
Obviously, Apple always prefers an app maker to make a native iOS app rather than a web app. There’s even more to it than just the 30% cut. Apple just generally wants to have maximum control over how users discover apps (which enabled Apple to build its own advertising business, contrary to Steve Jobs’ vision, but also means Apple is in a stronger position to engage in self-preferencing). Therefore, Apple never wanted web apps to offer quite as good a user experience (UX) as native apps. The idea was that almost all of the money (the only profitable segment probably being adult content, which Apple deemed too inconducive to its reputation) would be made by native apps, but web apps might just be good enough that those who wanted disallowed app categories would still not switch from the iPhone to an Android phone.
Presumably not in the early days, but definitely after a while, Apple wanted to be able to point to web apps when defending its App Store aftermarket monopoly, arguing that one can make apps even without going through the App Store. In that context, PWAs came in particular handy: they’re websites, but users can create icons on their iPhone start screen and launch them like native apps. There would be performance degradations, notifications wouldn’t work the same way, and there wouldn’t be a convenient payment system. But in principle, one could tap and launch them like apps.
War on web innovation
In order to ensure that web apps wouldn’t become too good, Apple had to make sure that browsers wouldn’t be able to support PWAs in all sorts of ways that could close ever more of the performance and UX gap between web apps and native apps. To actively obstruct innovation, Apple had to take the following three measures:
- Make sure Safari was just good for surfing, not for browser games and other types of web apps that could pose a substitutive threat to native iOS apps.
- Force all other iOS browsers to use Safari’s engine, meaning that Chrome on iOS wasn’t going to be Chrome, but just Safari in disguise.
- Limit the operating system functionality available to browsers, such as for notifications. Over time, minor improvements were made, but at a snail’s pace and always too little, too late.
Most consumers just don’t know. Apple presents itself as a promoter of innovation, but what it has been doing in connection with web apps and browsers (and not only there) is the exact opposite.
Then came the DMA as well as a market investigation by the UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) into cloud gaming and mobile browsers (with a focus on the browser engine issue, and the combination of issues made sense because cloud gaming could work in browsers if not for Apple’s anti-innovative measures). While the DMA’s rules related to app distribution weren’t hard and fast enough to have Apple profoundly worried, the simple rule that alternative browser engines had to be allowed seemed more enforceable (plus it’s so costly to make a browser that Apple would have risked litigation with someone like Google over that issue). So Apple decided to make a concession with respect to browser engines. And in the EU, with a view to setting default browsers other than Safari.
But Apple wouldn’t be Apple if they weren’t going to come up with something. In this context, however, what Apple does is the most defiant behavior of any tech company in history in response to regulation.
Degraded web app UX in Safari and no web apps in alternative browsers
Apple decided to massively degrade web apps, and especially to an extent that makes the types of browser games that many people would actually like to play ugly and inconvenient to use.
Again, like under the old plan, the key thing to do was to make sure that
- Safari wouldn’t be too good for Apple’s own good, and
- other browsers wouldn’t be able to offer a better alternative.
If any company has ever declared war on innovation, even to the detriment of its own (high-)paying customers, there you have a candidate.
So, what happens with that latest iOS beta to EU users (how Apple identifies them is unclear, but it may analyze the SIM card, country code etc.) is the following:
- PWAs can’t be linked to alternative browsers. Apple simply doesn’t allow it anymore at the operating system or launcher level. Users in the EU are forced to open them in Safari, if they want to open them at all.
- Safari then doesn’t enable them to run the way web apps used to work (and still work in the rest of the world). No full-screen mode in particular. So instead of web apps, those are just web links on the start screen.
The following YouTube video shows the difference between a web app running in full-screen mode and a link simply being opened in Safari like any website:
There are three issues related to the drawback of not getting the full-screen mode:
- It doesn’t look good. There are websites where it doesn’t matter too much, but for games, visuals are really important.
- It reduces the available amount of screen real estate. On those small screens, every user interface element at the top or bottom of a browser window that you can save is valuable (except for web apps that just display a very simple kind of information, such as a simple technical status display). There’s hardly a game where screen space doesn’t matter on a mobile phone.
- If one controls apps that require a high frequency of interactions, such as games, and if those interactions must happen very fast, which also applies to games, then one will be frustrated all the time: it’s inevitable that one will hit user interface elements that wouldn’t be there in full-screen mode, and which result in scrolling or the relevant web page being left, which can destroy all of the progress one made during gameplay.
What is Apple’s legal strategy?
Apple’s legal strategy comes down to saying that whatever is not expressly prohibited is allowed. The DMA doesn’t tell them explicitly that PWAs must run in alternative browsers. It doesn’t say PWAs must run in full-screen mode even in Safari.
The reason why Apple limits this to the EU is because in other jurisdictions they need to point to PWAs when defending their monopoly in native app distribution. In the EU they can say there’s now an opening for alternative app stores (which won’t really get traction, except maybe for adult content, for various reasons discussed elsewhere on this website).
So Apple’s EU anti-web-app strategy is very much linked to the DMA’s alternative app store mandate. In the end, Apple will only allow the minimum amount of competition and innovation that the law explicitly requires.
What could lawmakers and regulators do?
It’s going to be difficult to combat this anti-innovative behavior based on the DMA. Existing antitrust law might even be better (or less bad) in this particular context, though the whole idea of the DMA was to make it easier to regulate. And any challenges under traditional antitrust law would face the hurdle that Apple can point to the theoretical possibility of (even if commercially not too relevant) alternative app stores.
Apple’s conduct here is arrogant, hostile and unethical. Destroying something that worked, and to do so only in one part of the world, is a new low for which there is no justification. It’s worse than what is referred to as a scorched-earth policy.
That behavior does not come without longer-term risks. In the short term, it helps Apple to cement its aftermarket monopoly power. But Apple is testing EU lawmakers’ resolve. The solution wouldn’t be unfettered regulation, as that would be like a trade war on the United States. For sure, the Chinese government would have the power and the strength to just kick Apple out of its market the way Apple ejected Fortnite from the App Store in August 2020. If it meant that countless Chinese citizens could basically throw away their iPhones, China could handle (some Chinese companies make phones now that are arguably better than Apple’s products). But China is stronger than the EU in various ways.
What the EU could consider, however, are amendments to the DMA that threaten draconian sanctions and impose additional obligations, such as a Most Favored Nations clause: it would then be illegal to deprive users in the EU of benefits that have a competitive significance and are available elsewhere in the world.
By showing the EU that in the end it will just take technical measures to harm innovation and competition, Apple forces EU policy makers to step up their game.