Apple’s lock on iPhone browser engines gets a December deadline

We might finally see the first iPhone browsers built on top of third-party engines now that Japanese regulators have taken up the issue. Apple’s malicious compliance in the EU has so far prevented Chrome, and its Blink engine, for example, from coming to iOS, but recently published guidelines related to Japan’s Smartphone Act could change that. Not only do they set a December deadline for restrictions to be lifted, but also specify that Apple can’t enforce alternative rules that make it difficult to adopt alternatives to the company’s own WebKit browser engine. According to a translation provided by the Open Web Advocacy organization, the guidelines prevent Apple from doing the following: > “Imposing unreasonable technical restrictions on individual app providers while allowing them to adopt alternative browser engines, placing excessive financial burdens on individual app providers for adopting alternative browser engines, and steering smartphone users away from using individual software that incorporates alternative browser engines.”