The EU Probes Whether Apple’s Ads and Maps Services Meets DMA Thresholds

In Focus

• Apple wants the EU to exempt its Ads and Maps Services from gatekeeper status
• The EU will decide whether the services comply with the DMA within 45 days
• The European Commission designated Safari browser and App Store as core platforms two years ago

The European Commission will probe whether Apple should be designated as a gatekeeper for its Ads and Maps services, in line with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, Apple says that its services should be exempted from the status, according to Reuters. The move comes after the tech giant notified the Commission that the Apple services meet the DMA threshold.

Which Apple Services Qualify under DMA as Gatekeeper?

Two years ago, the EU designated Apple’s Safari web browser, App Store, and the iOS operating system as core platform services under the DMA. If designated, Apple will have six months to comply with the DMA’s requirements.

Under the DMA, companies whose services have over 45 million active users and have a market capitalization of $79 billion are designated as gatekeepers. The EU has 45 working days to make a decision on Apple Ads and Maps DMA compliance, and determine whether the two services should be designated as gatekeepers.

The DMA is designed to rein in the dominance of major tech companies and create a level playing field for competitors in order to widen options for consumers. Apple’s EU Digital Markets Act update comes barely a month after the company lost a £1.5 billion consumer lawsuit in the U.K. in October 2025. Apple lost the lawsuit after the U.K. Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled that its app store practices stifled competition.

The Gatekeeper Designation is Unjustified, Apple Says

Apple confirmed that it had submitted rebuttals to the pre-designation issued by the EU. In its submission, the tech company argued that its ads and maps services were relatively small players in the European market to justify the EU gatekeeper designation on Apple.

According to the smartphone maker, its ads service holds a small market share compared to competitors such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, X, and TikTok. For instance, the EU is investigating Google over claims of news demotion in search results. Apple further claimed that it does not use data from its other services or third-party offerings in its ads business.

Apple added that usage of its Maps services in the EU remains limited compared to Waze and Google Maps. The iPhone maker further said that Apple Maps does not have important features to support intermediation functions that would enable it to directly link enterprises to end users.

Other U.S. Companies Facing DMA Probes

Apple is not the only U.S. tech company that the EU is probing under the DMA rules. Earlier this month, the European Commission also announced three investigations into cloud service giants, Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

In two of these probes, the EU wants to assess whether Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated as gatekeepers. The third probe focuses on assessing the sufficiency of the DMA in handling anticompetitive practices in the cloud computing industry.