The European Commission has announced the names of seven tech companies that have declared meeting the thresholds to qualify as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a new set of rules aimed at ensuring fair and open competition in the digital sector.
The companies are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung.
These companies have a large market size and impact in the EU, serving more than 45 million monthly active end users and more than 10,000 yearly active business users on a number of core platform services, such as search engines, social networking services and operating systems.
The Commission will now verify their submissions and designate the gatekeepers for specific platform services by September 6.
Once designated, the gatekeepers will have six months to comply with the DMA rules, which include:
– Not locking in users in their ecosystem or imposing unfair terms and conditions.
– Not deciding which apps users have to pre-install on their devices or which app store they have to use.
– Not exploiting their advantage by favouring their own products and services over those of competitors.
– Ensuring interoperability of their messaging apps with others.
The Commission said that the DMA rules will benefit consumers by giving them more choice, better prices and higher quality services, and will foster innovation by allowing new entrants and smaller players to access the market.
“With the Digital Markets Act, together with the Digital Services Act and the Data Act – and soon with the AI Act, Europe is completely reorganising its digital space to both better protect EU citizens and enhance innovation for EU startups and companies!” read part of a statement by Commissioner Breton.