iPhone: what happens when the cuffs come off?

The EU is preparing to set the iPhone free. James O'Malley investigates what it will mean for Apple and iPhone owners

When you buy an Apple product, it can often feel like a deal with the devil. On the one hand, you can be confident that your new device will be slick, intuitive and powerful. But on the other hand, you’re acquiescing to Apple’s locked down ecosystem of apps and services. Want to run an unapproved app on your new iPhone? Forget it.

This is how it’s been since 2008, when the App Store first launched – since when apps have turned into an almost unfathomably lucrative business for Apple. In the year prior to Apple’s most recent financial statement, the store raked in a staggering $78 billion of services revenue, most of which is derived from the App Store.

But if rumours are true, the gold rush could soon be coming to an end. According to well-connected business journalist Mark Gurman of Bloomberg News, developers in Cupertino are hard at work updating the iPhone’s operating system so that it can support third-party app stores and apps that have been “sideloaded” onto the device. In the not-too-distant future, you could be installing apps on your iPhone that haven’t earned Apple’s prior approval.

Such a move would dramatically upend years of Apple’s uncompromising App Store policy – and shake the foundations of the iPhone’s security model, too.

Protection money 

The story begins in Strasbourg, where in September last year new European legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), was signed into law. A sprawling piece of legislation, it has been crafted with one goal in mind.