Apple's gatekeeper status upheld

The General Court of the European Union has rejected Apple's challenge to its designation as a "gatekeeper" under the Digital Markets Act, affirming the European Commission's authority to regulate the company's app store ecosystem across all major platforms Engadget. The ruling, issued this month, came from the General Court, a constituent body of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and was formalized in press release No 96/26 CJEU.

The court's decision touches the core architecture of Apple's software distribution. Judges upheld the Commission's determination that Apple's five app stores — covering iOS, macOS, watchOS, iPadOS, and tvOS — constitute a single core platform service for DMA purposes, rather than five distinct offerings subject to separate assessment Engadget. That consolidation matters procedurally: it closes off any argument that individual platforms, taken alone, might fall below the DMA's designation thresholds.

Substantively, the ruling requires Apple to keep allowing rival services to interoperate with all five app stores, and bars the company from favoring its own services over competitors' offerings within those stores. The General Court also found inadmissible Apple's separate "plea of illegality" against a DMA provision, and ruled that Apple's challenge to the Commission's iMessage investigation was likewise inadmissible CJEU.

Apple has said it disagrees with the outcome. A company spokesperson stated: "We firmly believe the DMA's mandate goes beyond what is lawful and proportionate, threatening to erode decades of privacy and security protections we've built and leaving our users vulnerable to new risks" Engadget. As of this writing, Apple has not indicated whether it will appeal to the Court of Justice, the higher tier of the EU judicial system.

This is not Apple's only open dispute with Brussels. The company still has two pending cases before EU courts: one challenging the Commission's order forcing Apple to open iOS to third-party developers, and a separate appeal against a €500 million fine levied for anti-steering violations — restrictions that prevented app developers from directing users to cheaper payment options outside the App Store Engadget.

The gatekeeper fight has been building for some time. In September 2025, Apple published a newsroom post arguing that the DMA "is not living up to" its stated promise of expanding competition and consumer choice in the EU Apple Newsroom. That framing positioned the regulation as a policy failure on its own terms, rather than a legal overreach — a distinct argument from the one Apple has now lost in court, which centered on whether the Commission's designation and enforcement mechanics were lawful and proportionate.

The distinction matters for what happens next. Losing the gatekeeper challenge does not resolve Apple's policy argument about market outcomes; it resolves the narrower legal question of whether Brussels had the authority to designate and regulate Apple's platforms the way it has. Those are separate battles, and Apple appears to be fighting both simultaneously — one in court, one in public opinion.

Apple's core objection, reiterated in the spokesperson's statement, is that interoperability mandates degrade the security model the company has built around its app review process and sandboxing architecture. That's a real engineering tension: opening APIs and app store access to third parties genuinely does expand attack surface, and Apple's argument is not without technical merit. Whether the DMA's obligations force trade-offs disproportionate to the competitive gains is precisely the kind of judgment call courts are ill-suited to make with confidence, and it is worth flagging that neither this ruling nor Apple's public statements settle that question empirically.

What the ruling does settle, for now, is jurisdiction. The General Court's decision to treat all five Apple app stores as one core platform service closes a structural avenue Apple might have used to argue for narrower obligations on lower-traffic platforms like tvOS or watchOS. It also confirms the Commission's broader reading of the DMA — that gatekeeper status attaches to an ecosystem, not to individual products within it, a principle with implications for how the same law might eventually be applied to other bundled platform businesses.

The remaining two cases — the iOS third-party developer order and the €500 million anti-steering fine — will likely be more consequential for how the App Store's economics actually function, since they touch payment flows and distribution mechanics more directly than the abstract question of gatekeeper designation. Those rulings are still pending. Apple's next move, including whether it appeals this decision to the full Court of Justice, will shape how aggressively it contests the remaining fronts.