Comment by wtallis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtallis | Hacker News Reader

The headline currently reads: "Apple threatens to stop selling iPhones in the EU".

The blog post cites an article from The Guardian, with the headline "Apple calls for changes to anti-monopoly laws and says it may stop shipping to the EU". In that article, nothing is mentioned about ceasing iPhone sales. It does say: "warning that unless it is amended the company could stop shipping some products and services to the 27-country bloc" and elsewhere: "It did not specify which products could in future be prevented from being distributed in the EU, but said that the Apple Watch, first released a decade ago, might not be released today in the EU"

The actual press release from Apple seems to be https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/the-digital-markets-a... and if there's anything in there that supports the headline of this HN submission, it's too subtle for me to find. I think this submission is unreasonably sensationalized, with the predictable effect that the comments here are mostly knee-jerk reactions to the (false) headline instead of discussion of the validity or lack thereof of any specific complaints from Apple.

What's news to me is apparently the European Commission is required to conduct a review of the DMA every three years, including collecting feedback from the public (both users and businesses). So Apple's complaints aren't coming out of the blue; they're part of that feedback process.

The Apple press release does say “potentially be forced to stop shipping our products in the EU”.

> And according to the European Commission, under the DMA, it’s illegal for us to share these features with Apple users until we bring them to other companies’ products. If we shared them any sooner, we’d be fined and potentially forced to stop shipping our products in the EU.

That's still about withholding specific features, not about abandoning entire product lines in the EU. And it's quite the opposite of a threat from Apple to the EU.

Hasn't Apple been pretty consistent in choosing to ship with fewer features where necessary rather than not ship at all? Given that, the "If we shared them any sooner" bit only makes sense as an explanation for why Apple's choosing their usual course of action, not as a threat to change course and pull out of the EU market.

No it’s not.

So far they’ve chosen to go with a simple feature flag but eventually it may require a pullout. Especially if the EU fines them for not releasing features in the EU.

> So far they’ve chosen to go with a simple feature flag but eventually it may require a pullout.

Isn't that entirely your speculation, not supported by anything Apple has actually said or done?

As far as I can recall, the most notable example of an Apple product getting a limited rather than global release was the Vision Pro—and that was just a slow roll-out to new countries, not exclusion from the entire EU. And on the other hand, there's a long list of products where Apple has shipped with regional differences in features, both software and hardware.

> Especially if the EU fines them for not releasing features in the EU.

Has the EU actually made that threat yet? Because it would be quite a stretch to accuse Apple of making a threat to the EU in response to a threat from the EU that hasn't actually been stated.

The quote literally says “stop shipping our products”. That’s the literal threat.

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