Britain's Turn: What 'Strategic Market Status' Means for Apple, Google and Mobile Games

For years, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) could study the mobile phone business, write long reports about it and complain, but it could not do very much. That changed with a new law, and in October 2025 the regulator used its new powers for the first time on mobile: it designated both Apple and Google as having strategic market status (SMS) in mobile platforms.

That label sounds dry, but it lets the CMA set specific, legally binding rules for how the two companies run their operating systems, app stores and browsers in the UK. For mobile games, the questions on the table include how apps are reviewed and ranked, whether developers can steer players to cheaper offers, and how fairly rival services such as cloud gaming are treated.

The new law behind it

The power comes from the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, whose digital competition rules took effect on 1 January 2025. Under it, the CMA can investigate a company and, if it finds "substantial and entrenched market power" plus a position of strategic significance in a digital activity, designate it with SMS. It can then impose conduct requirements tailored to that company.

The CMA opened SMS investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile platforms in January 2025 and announced both designations in October 2025. Breaking the resulting rules can bring fines of up to 10% of a company's global turnover.

What the CMA wants to change

Rather than one big rulebook like the EU's Digital Markets Act, the CMA has said it will work in stages, setting out roadmaps of priorities. Its early areas of focus for app stores include:

• Fair app review: clear, predictable and fair treatment of apps submitted to the stores.
• Ranking and discovery: making sure app store search and ranking do not unfairly disadvantage some developers.
• Steering: whether developers can tell users about offers outside the app store.
• Interoperability: access to phone features that rival apps and devices need.

The CMA has also secured commitments from both companies on how they review and rank apps, an approach critics call too soft and supporters call faster than a courtroom fight.

The Microsoft-Activision connection

British gamers may remember the CMA for another reason. In April 2023 it blocked Microsoft's takeover of Activision Blizzard over concerns about the future of cloud gaming, then approved a restructured deal in October 2023 after Microsoft agreed to sell the cloud-streaming rights for Activision's games outside the European Economic Area to Ubisoft. Mobile phones were central to that argument: cloud streaming is one of the main ways big console games reach a phone.

What it means for players and studios

For British players, nothing dramatic happened overnight. There is no UK version of Europe's alternative app stores yet, and the CMA has preferred step-by-step changes. But if steering rules arrive, UK mobile games could soon show the same "buy on our website" offers that US players have seen since 2025 (see our web shop explainer).

For UK developers, including many mobile studios, the most immediate benefit may be fairer and more predictable app review, which matters for small teams whose updates can be held up for days.

Why it matters

The UK is now one of several jurisdictions pulling Apple and Google in the same direction, alongside the EU (see our DMA explainer), Japan (see our story on Japan's smartphone act) and Korea. Each acts differently, but together they are changing the default assumption that a phone maker sets every rule for the games on its phone.