The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today published its final report pertaining to its investigation into mobile browsers and cloud gaming. It finds that “competition between different mobile browsers is not working well, and this is holding back innovation in the UK”, according to Margot Daly, Chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group.

The next step is already underway – the CMA has opened investigations in January into whether to designate Apple and Google as having strategic market status (SMS) under the UK’s new digital markets competition regime. The SMS investigations are expected to conclude “later this year”. Under the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act which came into force in January this year, the CMA can – if warranted – impose legally binding conduct requirements or pro-competition interventions on firms designated as having SMS.

If Apple and/or Google are designated with SMS, then the CMA “should consider imposing appropriate interventions”, today’s report says, including “measures which could enhance the ability of other browsers to compete by offering new, innovative features to consumers, as well as enabling users actively to choose their preferred mobile browser”.

This is obviously more about Apple than Google, with the iPhone and iPad maker not allowing browser engines other than WebKit used by Safari to be powering any competing mobile browser. The situation is entirely different on Android. For what it’s worth, the CMA decided that no further action is necessary with regards to cloud gaming (which was the other part of the investigation).

The CMA’s investigation that is concluded with today’s report was opened in 2021, and for some reason it took almost four years to come to these very obvious conclusions.

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