The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has now followed the EU's playbook and categorized Apple and Google as qualifying for regulation, plus potentially subject to incredibly lucrative fines.

There was never any question that UK would not emulate Europe and this part of its Digital Markets Act. The only question was over what synonym the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) would use in place of the EU's "gatekeeper" term to describe Big Tech firms.

As revealed in July 2025, the CMA has gone for saying certain firms have "Strategic Market Status" (SMS). What hasn't been revealed is what the criteria is that would designate Apple and Google as SMS, but ignore Amazon and Microsoft.

Nonetheless, as planned, the UK has now announced that it has "today designated Apple and Google's mobile platforms with strategic market status."

"Apple and Google's mobile platforms are used by thousands of businesses right across the economy to market and sell products and services to millions of customers," Will Hayter, Executive Director for Digital Markets at the CMA, said in a statement, "but the platforms' rules may be limiting innovation and competition."

The CMA says it came to this conclusion after noticing that consumers tend to either use Apple or Android. Therefore to reach all users, businesses have to develop for both platforms.

Reportedly, it was helped in reaching this conclusion by over 150 unspecified stakeholders, and had "constructive engagement with Apple and Google."

Ahead of the new announcement, Apple said that the CMA ""undermines the privacy and security protections our users have come to expect, hampers our ability to innovate, and forces us to give away our technology for free to foreign competitors."

The CMA is at pains to say that designating the two as this SMS category "is not a finding of wrongdoing" and that nothing is changing immediately. It does, though, bring the companies under UK legislation that will allow the CMA "to consider proportionate, targeted interventions."

That would be another synonym, this time for fines.

UK keeps delaying

This announcement saying nothing is changing yet, is the latest in several years of the UK failing to do what it says. In early 2024, it said it would immediately launch multiple investigations into Big Tech — although not actually immediately.

That was because at that time, the CMA did not have the authority to do these investigations. Its then limited powers were challenged — including by Apple — and when it announced its immediate investigations, it was months away from getting its full authority.

It had been able to mount a probe into the App Store back in 2021. But it then dropped it in August 2024, saying it "no longer constitutes an administrative priority."

The UK government has repeatedly made Big Tech a priority, but then failed to follow through. Back in 2020, two years before the EU's Digital Markets Act came into law, it proposed a Digital Markets Unit (DMU).

To be fair, it did follow through and launch the DMU — a year later. And with 60 staff but no powers, not until 2023.

Note that while the UK is physically part of Europe, its self-inflicted Brexit decision means it is not an EU member state. The UK is still emulating EU laws, but for the moment this means it has escaped Apple withholding certain iPhone features.