European Commission places Apple iPadOS under strict restrictions

April 29 (UPI) -- The European Commission ruled on Monday that Apple's iPadOS, which is used as the operating system for its tablets, is a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act and now must comply with its new strict rules.

The commission has given Apple six months to get the iPadOS into compliance. A statement by the commission said the operating system's business user numbers exceed its quantitative threshold "elevenfold" while end-user numbers were close but expected to rise.

Apple's end users are "locked in" to iPadOs, with the tech company disincentivizing them from switching to other operating systems for tablets, according to the commission. It said business users are "locked in" to iPadOS as well because of its "large and commercially attractive user base."

"Our market investigation showed that despite not meeting the thresholds, iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers," said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president in charge of competitive policy for the European Commission, in a statement.

"Today's decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform, in addition, to compliant with the DMA."

The announcement marked a continued crackdown the European Commission has been making on large tech companies through its Digital Markets Act. In March, they found Alphabet in noncompliance for steering customers to their own products in Google play and self-preferencing in Google Search.

Alphabet, the parent of Google, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, the parent of Facebook, and Microsoft have all been designated as gatekeeper sites, where they have to abide by DMA rules that foster competition.