Apple’s UK market-probe win offers timely reminder about procedural obligations

MLex Market Insight

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4.9 • 9 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

It’s one thing to lose a high-profile antitrust lawsuit targeting a tech behemoth on the merits of the case; having a judge rule against you for missing deadlines is another. Yet a procedural stumble was enough to place the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority on the receiving end of a court ruling that upended its probe of Apple’s mobile browser and cloud-gaming services. The recent ruling of the Competition Appeal Tribunal in Apple’s favor was a reminder that, whatever its motives, the regulator can’t escape statutory obligations over procedure.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast, covering the most significant news in regulatory affairs with the assistance of our team of reporters around the globe.
0:22.7	My name is Laurel Henning and I'm a Sydney-based senior correspondent with Emlax's Asia Pacific Bureau and it's great to have your company
0:28.2	today. Now, meeting deadlines is important for us all, no less our team of intrepid
0:33.9	MLX reporters, but what about the frustration of missed deadlines?
0:38.3	Well, that's the sting at the heart of the UK Competition and Markets' authorities' recent court loss before the country's specialised competition court.
0:47.3	Apple's recent successful appeal of the UK antitrust regulators' decision to probe its mobile browser and cloud gaming services
0:56.2	was more than a straightforward win for big tech. It was a significant setback for the
1:01.7	watchdog's high-profile digital markets enforcement drive, and why did the UK regulator lose?
1:07.2	Well, it was all a question of deadlines. Simon Zakaria is an M-Lex senior correspondent in
1:13.6	London and he has written a piece of analysis covering all the twists and turns of this legal battle,
1:19.3	and he joins us now. Now, Simon, earlier this month, Apple won its court appeal of a 20-21 decision
1:26.7	by the UK competitionulator to open a probe
1:29.8	into the company's mobile browser and cloud gaming services. But what was the background to the
1:35.0	case? Yes. So in June 2021, the Competition of Markets Authority, and that's the UK Competition
1:42.9	Regulator, opened a what's called a market study, and that's the UK Competition Regulator, opened what's called a market
1:46.3	study, and it scrutinised both Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems. In the December of that year,
1:52.9	the CMA reported some negative preliminary findings in an interim report, so it wasn't a good
2:00.0	outcome. Despite that, it chose not to upgrade
2:03.3	the market study into a full-blown market investigation. And this is essentially where the
2:09.5	regulator can make findings that lead to interventions. So if we move on to the following year,
2:15.9	which was June 22, the CMA issued a final report in its market study.
2:22.7	And this time it said it found substantial concerns about Apple and Google.
	...

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