Ben Wood

It's part of Apple's DNA.

It's a central pillar to the way it markets all of its products, the way it markets the iPhone as its kind of flagship product.

It's focused around privacy.

And basically, they don't want other people poking around in the depths of the iPhone when they've made a commitment to privacy.

And across all of the information you have stored across all your Apple devices, iCloud, wherever, they've made a commitment to their users that that's not going to happen.

They themselves stand up and say, we can't even see it.

You know, we have created this and engineered it on the basis that it will either reside on the device and only stay on the device, or it will go into Apple's secure cloud, which is also ring-fenced.

And...

I think it's a real impasse now because for Apple, they won't do that.

Now, they would say, well, we've opened up APIs.

Developers can use some aspects of AI, but in a very controlled manner.

But for the EU, they're saying, no, no, no, you can't just shut the door.

You have to open that up so it's a level playing field, so there is a true piece of competition, a true level playing field for competition.

And I struggle to see how they're going to get through this impasse, to be quite honest.

It's one of the rare benefits of Brexit.

I'll be honest with you, Adrian, I take no joy from that.

Brexit is probably the worst thing that's happened in my lifetime, but this is a rare occasion where I think there's some upside.

But let's just examine this kind of standoff, who's going to blink first.

So, where does this go?

If Apple really wanted to up the ante, they would mobilize that massive installed base of iPhone users and start saying to them, well, okay, you need to start lobbying your politicians because of the fact that ultimately they are defeaturing your iPhone and you're paying a lot of money for a very capable device we are offering today.