March 31, 2025
Japan Fair Trade Commission
Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software (Act No. 58 of 2024; hereinafter referred to as “this Act”) stipulates that, among business operators providing software particularly necessary for the use of smartphones (basic operation software, application stores, browsers, and search engines; hereinafter collectively referred to as “specified software”), those whose business scale in relation to the provision of such software is capable of excluding or controlling the business activities of other business operators, shall be designated based on indicators such as the number of users or other metrics of business scale for each type of specified software, as specified by Cabinet Order.
Operators of Specified Software designated under this Act are subject to certain prohibitions (Prohibited Conduct) and obligations (Compliance Requirements) and also obligated to submit an annual report detailing the measures taken to comply with the provisions of this Act.
The Japan Fair Trade Commission designated the following Specified Software Operators on March 26, 2025, pursuant to the provisions of Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Act.
1 Designation of Specified Software Operators(See attachments for details)
|
|
Operator designated |
Specified Software for which the
operator was designated |
|
１ |
Apple Inc.（note） |
Basic operating software, Application
store, Browser |
|
２ |
iTunes K.K. （note） (Corporate Number : 8011101043359) |
Application store |
|
３ |
Google LLC (Corporate Number: 3700150072195) |
Basic operation software, Application
store, Browser, Search engine |
2 Regarding the effective date of this Act
The provisions related to the Prohibited Conduct and Compliance Requirements under this Act are scheduled to be fully enforced from a date specified by a Cabinet Order, no later than December 18, 2025.* This announcement is a tentative translation. Please refer to the original text written in Japanese.
