3 ms·

Dropping their second biggest region, which makes them 25% of revenue sounds unlikely. Especially as it's just putting that money into competitors' pockets.

• twoodfin 2y ago
  They don’t have to drop it entirely, they just stop enabling features there that would trigger the EU’s gatekeeper requirements. It will hurt their competitiveness and sales, but that’s a relatively small price to pay vs. giving up the product design culture they’ve honed for almost 50 years.
  • ethbr1 2y ago
    > product design culture they’ve honed for almost 50 year That's an interesting way to phrase not supporting non-Apple interoperability.
    • twoodfin 2y ago
      It’s also a way to phrase, “Hey, we’ve figured out how to save 10% battery life on the Watch by rejiggering the sync protocol and can ship it in the next iOS / watchOS point release.” The flexibility and agility you have when the only engineering constraints are internal are night and day vs. having to evolve a documented external spec with interop requirements.
      • disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        Unfortunately for Apple, they've been too successful to get away with self-preferencing anymore. As an EU citizen, I don't like everything they do, but the DMA is rocking as otherwise we'll end up with 5-10 companies basically running all technology and way less competition. It's very interesting to me that so many people claim to be in favour of competition but don't like laws like the DMA.
    • milesrout 2y ago
      They support plenty of non-Apple interoperability. They support HTTP and IMAP and SMTP, for example. They support SMS and phone calls. They support lots of standards, including de facto standards around things like calendars. They don't support everything, but to say they don't support interoperability is silly.
      • ChocolateGod 2y ago
        > They support HTTP and IMAP and SMTP, for example. They support SMS and phone calls. But they also need to support the updates to these standards, rather than purposely holding it back to push people to their own services which are not open.
  • IsTom 2y ago
    Picking an ecosystem with working and chaper peripherials vs one with partially-working and more expensive peripherials seems like an easy choice for consumers.
  • groestl 2y ago
    > they just stop enabling features there that would trigger the EU’s gatekeeper requirements Then the requirements will be adjusted.