Comment by jokoon
8 months ago
Interesting!
Basically the EU is now able to force american companies to do things that the US regulator will not do, probably because Apple can manage to lobby US congress but not the EU parliament.
That probably means that US companies can probably help "counter" Apple on certain things as long as the EU sees that it benefits the consumer.
I don't know if Trump somehow caused this situation.
Standards are essential for a common market and competition and drivers for prosperity. This is nothing new. Your Iphone probably also says "RoHS", which marks compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. Mostly manufacturers try to comply with both EU and US standards at the same time. Typically the EU environmental and safety standards are a bit stricter. For example, in medicine, you first get FDA approval and then EMA approval, not just because it's a bigger market, but also because it's easier.
You know in a parallel world this headline is just "EU mandates Apple-designed P2P Wi-Fi standard". They did submit it for standardization after all, keeping to their proprietary one was just a transparent segmentation play.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
EU has been regulating tech companies at least since the MicroUSB charger mandate. This has nothing to do with Trump, but once he hears about it he'll make sure everyone else knows too.