Apple’s mobile browser ‘holding back innovation’, CMA warns – UKTN

Apple’s mobile browser is ‘holding back innovation’, the UK’s competition watchdog has warned in its latest Big Tech broadside.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the Californian firm’s Safari app determines what competing mobile browsers can do on iOS, the operating system of iPhones and iPads, limiting the extent to which competitors can differentiate their browsers and offer enhanced features to iOS users.

The CMA’s inquiry also found that Apple’s own mobile browser Safari has or has had greater or earlier access to key functionalities from the operating system and Apple’s WebKit browser engine, compared to competing mobile browsers, which had a “negative impact on competition and innovation” and so “consumers and businesses could be missing out on potential innovative features that mobile browsers can provide.”

Margot Daly, Chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group, said: “Following our in-depth investigation, we have concluded that competition between different mobile browsers is not working well, and this is holding back innovation in the UK.”

“I welcome the CMA’s prompt action to open strategic market status investigations into both Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems. The extensive analysis we’ve set out today will help that work as it progresses.”

In addition, the inquiry found Apple’s rules limit competition and so may prevent:

• Other browser companies such as Mozilla and Vivaldi from offering users additional privacy features when browsing the web;
• Microsoft, Mozilla and others from providing additional security features to protect from malicious attacks online; and
• Multiple browser providers loading pages on iOS as fast and efficiently as they could (compared to if they were allowed to use a browser engine other than WebKit).

The CMA also found that Apple’s rules are holding back a category of apps known as ‘progressive web apps’ (PWAs) that are lower cost and easier for developers to build since they can run on any operating system.

The watchdog said Many smaller UK app developers had told them that limits on web apps are holding back their business because they could be developing PWAs as a comparable and lower cost alternative to developing a native app.

The inquiry found that the CMA should consider imposing appropriate interventions, including measures to enhance the ability of other browsers to compete by offering new, innovative features to consumers, as well as enabling users actively to choose their preferred mobile browser which could drive competition.

Podcast: How Apple and Google abuse the app market – Gene Burrus, global policy council, CAF

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