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| Samsung's flag flutters in the breeze in front of the company's building in Seoul in this 2022 file photo. Yonhap |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Samsung Electronics is expected to benefit from the European Union's decision on Wednesday (local time) to designate Apple as one of the six global tech giants to be subject to stricter regulations, while excluding the Korean firm from the list, according to industry officials, Thursday.
The European Commission announced that Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance were identified as "gatekeepers," which provide 22 core platform services, such as the App Store, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Chrome and Safari.
The gatekeepers will be banned from favoring their own services over those offered by competitors and will have to share key information with business customers, in accordance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will take effect in March of next year.
There will be fines of up to 10 percent of a firm's global revenue for breaking the rules, and even up to 20 percent for repeat offenders. In cases of systematic infringements, the commission is also authorized to adopt additional remedies such as obliging a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it.
Before the announcement, Samsung was also mentioned as having the potential to be named as a gatekeeper.
However, the Korean firm was able to avoid the new rules, as it reportedly succeeded in convincing the commission to regard it as a "manufacturer" of smartphones, rather than an online platform provider.
"The commission has concluded that, although Gmail, Outlook.com and Samsung Internet Browser meet the thresholds under the DMA to qualify as gatekeepers, Alphabet, Microsoft and Samsung provided sufficiently justified arguments showing that these services do not qualify as gateways for the respective core platform services," the commission said. "It follows that Samsung is not designated as a gatekeeper with respect to any core platform service."
Samsung welcomed the decision, saying there will be no change to its business strategies.
In contrast, it has become difficult for Apple to avoid suffering a setback in its European operations, because iPhone users will be allowed to download apps outside of the App Store and provide limited personal data to the U.S. firm. In addition, the European Commission has not ruled out the possibility of putting Apple's iMessage on the list of core platform services subject to the DMA regulations.
"Apple will face difficulties in taking advantage of its closed ecosystem to maintain its lead in the premium market," an IT industry insider said. "Samsung has been able to avoid potential problems in selling its smartphones in Europe."
There remains the possibility that the gatekeepers may file lawsuits against the latest decision.
Apple said Wednesday that it was "very concerned about the privacy and data security risks the DMA poses for our users" and said it would seek to "mitigate these impacts."
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