Tim Cook to meet Europe's anti-trust chief

 Apple, like other American companies, will take advantage of Margrethe Vestager's visit to organize a meeting.




It’s a meeting at the summit. Margrethe Vestager, the head of European antitrust, is due to meet Tim Cook and other big American company bosses in the coming weeks. These meetings occur at a time when regulations are undergoing rapid change on the old continent, particularly with the arrival of two pieces of legislation, the DSA and DMA.

According to information from the Reuters news agency, Margrethe Vestager is to meet the bosses of Apple, Alphabet (Google), Bradcom, Nvidia. She should also take advantage of her visit to the United States to make a detour to the premises of OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.

Each time this visit will be motivated by the same objective, to ensure compliance with new European laws. During her meeting with Tim Cook, Margrethe Vestager should study the two plans proposed by the apple brand to comply with new European regulations.

Opening up to competition, the challenge of 2024

The old continent is asking Apple in particular to open its services to competition. Third-party App Stores should therefore see the light of day while applications like Apple Music could lose certain advantages within a few weeks. Another point that will be at the heart of discussions in the coming weeks is the Apple Wallet application.

The latter allows iPhone and Apple Watch owners to use the NFC chip on the back of their device to make payments. A very interesting technology, used by millions of people every day. But Apple has blocked this system and only Apple Wallet can operate the NFC chip.

Europe would like it to be possible to make this option work with other applications, which do not necessarily belong to the iPhone. According to the latest information from Reuters, Apple would be ready to modify its lines of code on this point to open up to competition.

Big changes coming?

The changes made by Apple should not, however, disrupt our use of the iPhone. Indeed, the arrival of third-party solutions does not mean that Apple's “native” applications will disappear. They will simply have fierce competition against them.

But for many analysts, the vast majority of users should continue to use the same services. Once a habit is formed, it is difficult to change

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