The CMA found Apple's WebKit rule holds back rival browsers, then put the remedy in its slower queue

The Competition and Markets Authority designated Apple's mobile platform as having strategic market status on 22 October 2025, a five year designation covering iOS, iPadOS, the App Store on mobile devices, the Safari browser and the WebKit browser engine. The designation itself imposed no obligations. What it produced was a 217 page final decision report, and that report contains the most specific official findings yet published on the rule that decides whether the web can compete with app stores on an iPhone.

At paragraph 7.71 the CMA finds that "the WebKit restriction restricts the ability of rival mobile browsers to innovate and develop features, and increases their costs". It concludes that this creates a barrier to entry and expansion for rival browsers and limits the competitive constraint on Safari. The restriction is not a law of physics: it is guideline 2.5.6 of Apple's App Review Guidelines, which requires apps that browse the web to use WKWebView, the framework Apple provides on top of WebKit.

The report puts numbers behind it. At paragraph 7.44 the CMA finds Safari has held "an extremely high and stable share of supply over a substantial period" and that, because of the WebKit rule, Apple's browser engine "does not face competition within Apple's Mobile Ecosystem". At paragraph 7.46 it records that in June 2025 Safari had an 84 per cent share of web traffic on Apple devices in the United Kingdom, with Chrome on 13 per cent.

On web apps the finding is blunter than the summaries suggest. Paragraph 7.8 states that "for content providers, at present, web apps are not a viable substitute for native apps downloaded from the App Store", despite web apps being cheaper to build and maintain. Several content providers told the CMA that the functionality problems they hit were caused by restrictions Apple imposes on browsers. Consumer data in paragraph 7.10 shows 92 per cent of iOS smartphone users had used the App Store and 30 per cent had used web apps, but among those using more than one method, 97 per cent named the App Store as their primary route and 3 per cent named web apps.

Advocacy groups have read this as a finding that web apps could become a substitute if Apple were forced to grant engine and functionality parity. The report does not say that. Paragraph 7.11 says the evidence "overall does not indicate that developments in web apps are likely to change significantly the current position of Apple's App Store over the next five years", while noting that two device makers and a range of developers submitted the opposite view and that some said they would invest more in web apps if performance improved. Open Web Advocacy, which campaigns for engine choice, published its reading of the designation on 4 November 2025.

The gap between finding and remedy is where this story sits. The CMA's roadmap for Apple, published on 23 July 2025, sorts possible interventions into three baskets. Requiring Apple to allow alternative browser engines sits in Category 2, described as "Measures we will consider from the first half of 2026", alongside choice architecture for browsers and digital wallets and exploratory work on progressive web apps. The roadmap says the regulator will "aim to consult" or "launch investigations" on those from the first half of 2026 onwards. Requiring Apple to give third party browsers that stay on WebKit access to the same functionality Safari uses sits in Category 3, the basket the CMA does not expect to pursue in the first half of the designation period at all.

The roadmap also promised an updated version in the first half of 2026. As of 17 August 2026 the CMA's published programme of work across mobile platforms, last updated on 14 August 2026, says only that it expects to progress work in relation to Apple concerning browsers and the removal of the WebKit restriction. It attaches no date. The commitments the CMA announced on 10 February 2026, and published in final form on 1 April 2026, covered app review, app store ranking, the use of data collected when reviewing apps and, for Apple, the handling of third party requests for interoperable access to operating system functionality. They did not cover browsers. The work the CMA did open in June 2026 concerned near field communication access for digital wallets and app store steering rules, with responses to the steering consultations published in August 2026.

The law firm Macfarlanes, writing on 20 March 2026, said the CMA had originally aimed to impose conduct requirements at around the same time as the designation decisions and was by then months behind the timelines it set itself. On browsers it recorded only that the regulator expects to progress work on removing Apple's prohibition on third party browser engines. What is not yet known is whether a browser engine consultation will open at all in 2026, what form any requirement would take, and whether the equivalent functionality question in Category 3 will ever be revisited. Apple has not been required to change guideline 2.5.6.