EU Big Tech Special Regulations Confirmed for 6 Companies Including Apple, Google, Meta... Samsung Excluded

Six companies, including Apple, Google, and Meta, will be subject to 'special regulations' starting next year to prevent the abuse of dominant market positions within the European Union (EU).

On the 6th (local time), the EU Commission announced the confirmation of six large platform operators designated as 'Gatekeeper' companies, which will be subject to special regulations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that will be fully enforced from next year. The DMA is a law that designates certain large platform operators as gatekeepers to regulate and prevent the abuse of market dominance by these platforms, which act as a kind of gateway between consumers and sellers.

The six companies are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft (MS). A total of 22 major services they provide, including social networking services (SNS), app stores, and operating systems (OS), are subject to regulation. Among the seven companies that voluntarily reported themselves as 'potential' regulation targets based on quantitative criteria set by the EU, such as revenue, only Samsung was excluded from the final list. These companies will be granted a grace period of about six months from today to comply with the DMA, with full regulation starting in March next year.

Companies designated as gatekeepers are prohibited from using personal information of users obtained through their services for business purposes without obtaining user consent. In the case of Google or Apple, they must open their app stores to allow apps that were previously only available on their own platforms to be downloaded mutually.

If obligations are not fulfilled, fines of up to 10% of the total annual revenue may be imposed. If repeated violations are confirmed, fines can be increased up to 20%. Furthermore, in cases considered 'systematic infringements,' the Commission may impose stronger sanctions, such as requiring the company to divest parts of its business, the EU stated.

Samsung Electronics, which was excluded from the final list, had voluntarily reported to the EU that it met the quantitative criteria due to its Samsung web browser service installed on Galaxy mobile phones.