Japan’s Experiment in Regulating Mobile Competition the European Way
As ex ante regulation sweeps across digital markets, Japan has decided not to stand athwart the global tide. With the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA) taking effect in December 2025, Tokyo aligned itself with the European Union’s effort to redesign platform competition by rule rather than by case. Among competition scholars, the prevailing mood is resignation—even among skeptics. This, it seems, is simply where policy is headed.
To be sure, the MSCA is narrower than the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), and its enforcer, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), favors consultation and guidance over the European Commission’s more confrontational style.
Yet the MSCA rests on the same flawed premises as the DMA. It treats size and concentration as proxies for competitive harm. It also presumes that practices such as self-preferencing or differentiated in-app payment terms are inherently suspect and therefore unlawful unless narrowly justified. And perhaps most importantly, it fails to grapple with how artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to remake the market completely.