…to be able to make sound management decisions and form executive strategy – you need to understand what the EU is. More specifically, you need to understand the European Single Market.
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The EU ban on roaming charges is a good example. European mobile phone companies generally aren’t allow to inflict surcharges for using their service across the EU.
Or, another way to put it would be that the EU does not let private parties turn the single market into multiple subdivided markets under private control. It doesn’t matter that most of these companies were European, their practices threatened the very concept of a single market, so the practice had to be eased out.
Private parties are not allowed to divide or fragment the single market, allowing that in the long term is an existential threat to the EU, because the single market is what the EU is for.
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Much like roaming, App Stores let private companies subdivide and control the single market to their own financial gain. When much of the digital economy is taking place on phones, tablets, and various other devices that are largely limited to App Stores, this is effectively ceding the single market to a fragmented market that’s entirely under corporate control.
This is against the core operating theory behind the EU. They would be institutionally against this even if the companies in question were European. Many, if not most, of the mobile phone operators affected by the roaming regulations were European. That didn’t earn them a pass on compliance.
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If Apple had faced reality and tried to understand the facts as they are, they would have used the talks to clarify all of these issues and more well in advance of the DMA taking effect.
But they didn’t because they have caught the tech industry management disease of demanding that reality bend to their ideas and wishes.
As classy as they like to say they are, they’ve really picked up a lot of GW Bush nature lately.