So long to the walled iOS ecosystem

For a long time, the European Union's Digital Marketing Act (DMA) has been chipping away at the walls of Apple's garden, and for the first time this week, a new third-party App Store has crept in through the crack into the iOS ecosystem.

Let's talk about it for a minute: iPhones have been around for a while. It was on January 9, 2007 when then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopped on the stage and announced the iPhone 1. Since then, the iPhone has kept a tightly-knit ecosystem that allowed only iOS-capable apps. Trying to get something outside the App Store was jailbreaking territory, a risky business that potentially bricks your phone.

Fast forward to today, and the EU's DMA is championing the effort to force Apple to loosen the reins. And the result? The EU gets the first-ever taste of app freedom on iPhones with this alternative app store – providing both developers and users with more choices of apps that could have never made it to the App Store.

But will Apple just sit and watch its carefully built castle crumble? And will this change ever make it outside the EU?

We'll keep an i on this space 😉

– Emmanuel