TL;DR: Apple’s rules and technical restrictions are blocking other browser vendors from successfully offering their own engines to users in the EU. At the recent Digital Markets Act (DMA) workshop, Apple claimed it didn’t know why no browser vendor has ported their engine to iOS over the past 15 months. But the reality is Apple knows exactly what the barriers are, and has chosen not to remove them.
Safari is the highest margin product Apple has ever made, accounts for 14-16% of Apple’s annual operating profit and brings in $20 billion per year in search engine revenue from Google. For each 1% browser market share that Apple loses for Safari, Apple is set to lose $200 million in revenue per year.
Ensuring other browsers are not able to compete fairly is critical to Apple’s best and easiest revenue stream, and allows Apple to retain full control over the maximum capabilities of web apps, limiting their performance and utility to prevent them from meaningfully competing with native apps distributed through their app store. Consumers and developers (native or web) then suffer due to a lack of competition.
This browser engine ban is unique to Apple and no other gatekeeper imposes such a restriction. Until Apple lifts these barriers they are not in effective compliance with the DMA.
We had the opportunity to question Apple directly on this at the 2025 DMA workshop. Here's how they responded:
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# Quick Background
As a quick background to new readers, we (Open Web Advocacy) are a non-profit dedicated to improving browser and web app competition on all operating systems. We receive no funding from any gatekeeper, nor any of the browser vendors. We have engaged with multiple regulators including in the EU, UK, Japan, Australia and the United States.
Our primary concern is Apple’s rule banning third-party browser engines from iOS and thus setting a ceiling on browser and web app competition.
We engaged extensively with the UK’s CMA and the EU on this topic and to our delight specific text was added to the EU’s Digital Markets Act explicitly prohibiting the banning of third-party browser engines, and stating that the purpose was to prevent gatekeepers from determining the performance, stability and functionality of third party browsers and the web apps they power.
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