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The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching so-called “strategic market status” (SMS) investigations into the mobile ecosystems of Apple and Google.
The investigations constitute part of the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) which passed last year and came into effect in January. The Act includes provisions for digital markets regulation — this includes giving the CMA the powers to designate specific companies as having strategic market status.
The CMA announced its first such SMS investigation last week, launching a probe into Google Search’s massive market share which is reportedly around the 90% mark. The regulator announced at the time that a second one would be coming in January, and we now know that it’s now using its fresh powers to establish whether Apple and Google have strategic market status in their respective mobile ecosystems, which covers things like browsers, app stores, and operating systems.
Under the new powers, the CMA can bestow “SMS” status on firms it deems to be overly dominant in a given market, and then propose remedies and interventions to improve competition.
Today’s announcement kickstarts a three-week period during which relevant stakeholders are invited to submit comments as part of the investigations, with the outcomes expected to be announced by October 22, 2025.
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Paul is a senior writer based in London, focused largely (but not exclusively) on the world of UK and European startups. He also writes about other subjects that he’s passionate about, such as the business of open source software. Prior to joining TechCrunch in June 2022, Paul had gained more than a decade’s experience covering consumer and enterprise technologies for The Next Web (now owned by the Financial Times) and VentureBeat. Pitches on: paul.sawers [at] techcrunch.com Secure/anon tip-offs via Signal: PSTC.08 See me on Bluesky: @jambo.bsky.social
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