If Apple stops servicing the EU… …life will go on. No EU country will be “doomed” let alone “totally doomed”. I prefer many Apple products over Android-based devices or, god forbid, any S(h)amsung crap, but the EU will continue to prosper without Apple Intelligence, iPhone Sharing or even iPhones and Macs at all. The EU is setting a precedent that every consumer would benefit from, especially if more countries would follow the lead. Yes, the EC’s approach could be better, they’re stumbling forwards (cookie-dialogs, plastic-bottle tethered-caps,o insane E2E encryption-invalidating proposals etc etc) but I still believe the overall direction will ultimately be beneficial to many.

The purpose of the DMA is to increase competition, not directly benefit the consumer. If there is no Apple product, you don't have that product to support your application and your business.

It's a 450M people hand, with decent GDP :-)

... which makes up a small fraction of Apple's profits. About 7% [1].

Losing 7% would be "A big deal", although they'd also lose a lot of the operational costs so the overall loss may be less than that. There are several costs of doing business in the EU.

I can also see them selling more to the UK and a black-market opening up in the EU for UK phones. Again, not a huge thing but a little +ve offset.

Overall, I could see it happening, maybe, emphasis on the maybe part. I think the EU thinks it's inconceivable for Apple to exit their market. I also think Apple are very hard-headed. Make the cost/benefit balance skew too heavily in the -ve direction, and the potential of future profits stop outweighing the costs.

Personally I really hope they just do as they're told by the EU because I think it'd hit the stock, and I could do with the stock staying reasonably high in the short term, but they'd recover. Hell, they could run on cash/savings with no sales for several years at the current rate...

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_mi...

Is it a joke? Apple is 27% of Apple revenue, profit is irrelevant as this is just finance engineering and you can put the value you want for tax reason.

>It’s unclear whether Maestri was saying that the EU accounts for 7 percent of Apple’s worldwide App Store revenue, or 7 percent of all revenue, but I suspect it doesn’t matter, and that both are around 7 percent

Eh.

Of Apple were to give up on the second largest market (GDP) in the world, I think that would make their platforms a lot less attractive as a target for software makers. More of them might decide to target other platforms first.

This is strongly wishful thinking. America isn't even the top trade partner of the EU as far as goods go. Many companies would literally hold a party if Apple, or any other American companies for that matter, left the EU market.