Could Apple have “played ball” with the European Commission regarding alternative marketplaces? The assumption is that the European Commission would be more flexible with Apple today for features like Siri AI and iPhone Mirroring had the company simply allowed no-or-low cost support for alternative marketplaces. Ben Thompson said he predicted as much on the most recent episode of Dithering:

I said “don’t Apple.” “This is going to be the problem. If you just chill out on the App Store or else your future integrated products are going to be in trouble.” That’s sort of exactly what’s happened.

While Ben’s take was ultimately a bit more nuanced, I suspect those who see Apple as wholly in the wrong agree with the above assertion without caveat because Apple bringing even more regulatory scrutiny upon themselves through hard-headed spite fits their narrative.

Until recently, the idea that simply playing ball with alternative marketplaces might have helped Apple felt possible to me. It felt possible specifically because Google seemed to avoid the same level of regulatory scrutiny with its ostensibly open Android OS, but that was always an assumption. Alternative marketplaces was clearly a top priority for the European Commission at the start of DMA enforcement and we never really saw them go head to head with Google because Android already supported sideloading. In other words, no one could say the European Commission was going easy on Android because Google played ball with alternative marketplaces because Google was never eligible to play ball with alternative marketplaces in the first place.

While the relationship between the European Commission and Google tells us nothing about playing ball, it tells us exactly how inconsequential support for alternative marketplaces is when it comes to regulatory scrutiny of integrated features. Apple hasn’t played ball with alternative marketplaces and now its new AI-based features are being withheld from the EU lest they get scrutinized for fines by the European Commission. Google hasn’t had to play ball with alternative marketplaces and now its new AI-based features are either being scrutinized for fines by the European Commission or being withheld lest they also get scrutinized. The European Commission is, rightly so in my opinion, regulating both operating systems equally and regardless of their support for alternative marketplaces. I say “rightly so” because the alternative would be a sure sign the European Commission isn’t evenhanded.

If in another universe Apple had satisfied the European Commission by adding support for Android-style sideloading to iOS, I think Siri AI and iPhone Mirroring would still be subject to the same regulatory environment that led to those features being withheld in the EU in this universe. We know this because Gemini on Android is getting the same level of regulatory scrutiny as Siri AI on iOS. Apple couldn’t have played ball with alternative marketplaces because there was no ball to be played.