Time for Apple to face the music?
Columnist Bill Thompson asks whether the time has come for Apple to be put under the EU microscope in the same way as Microsoft has. — Microsoft was humiliated by the European Union's Court of First Instance on Monday when it rejected almost all elements …
Context & Ripple Effects
Bill Thompson's column arrives days after the EU Court of First Instance dismissed almost every element of Microsoft's antitrust appeal, handing Brussels a template for dictating terms to a dominant technology firm. His argument — that Apple should face the same microscope — is explicitly a columnist's provocation, not a filed case, but Reuters' pickup shows the question travelling widely on the day.
The timing is pointed because Apple's own conduct gives regulators material: the company is defending iTunes in both Berlin and Brussels, has locked up T-Mobile as exclusive German carrier for the iPhone ahead of its debut, and Steve Jobs has confirmed Apple will actively break SIM unlocks even at the cost of bricking customers' handsets.
First-order effects
- Apple must defend its closed iTunes model directly in front of European audiences and officials who have just watched the Court of First Instance strip Microsoft of its appeal, while its carrier-exclusivity deal with T-Mobile and its anti-unlock posture put further lock-in practices on the record.
Second-order effects
- If Brussels applies the Microsoft playbook to consumer platforms, music labels and rival device makers gain a route to challenge DRM-tied pricing and handset exclusivity deals rather than competing only inside Apple's terms.
Third-order effects
- A sustained EU shift from policing operating systems to policing closed media-and-device ecosystems would make ecosystem control itself the regulated conduct, with Apple's music store and carrier arrangements as the test cases.
The trend: European antitrust enforcement is expanding from desktop software monopolies toward vertically integrated consumer digital platforms, with Apple emerging as the likely next target after Microsoft.