What the JFTC just published
On July 27, 2026, Japan's Fair Trade Commission published the second round of compliance reports filed by Apple Inc., iTunes K.K., and Google LLC under the Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software — the "Smartphone Act" (Mobile Software Competition Act, MSCA). The filings cover the period from December 18, 2025, when the law took full effect, through March 31, 2026, and were published under the mandatory-disclosure duty in Article 14 of the statute, with trade secrets redacted (JFTC press release, July 27, 2026).
The reports document continued rollout of the remedies the JFTC designated Apple and Google to provide: third-party app marketplaces now accepted on iOS in Japan for the first time, reduced Google Play service fees, expanded data-portability and interoperability tooling, and the browser- and search-choice screens that debuted in the companies' first reports back in February (JFTC, Feb 17, 2026; ppc.land). Crucially, the JFTC did not simply wave the filings through: it publicly demanded further explanation from both companies on how their revised fee levels were calculated — a sign the regulator is treating "dialogue" as an ongoing negotiation, not a rubber stamp.
The steelman: scholars have a real point
Eleven Japanese competition-law professors submitted a joint opinion to the JFTC ahead of the second reports, arguing Apple and Google may not be fully complying with the MSCA and urging the Commission to take a more assertive supervisory posture. Their core complaint is structural, not rhetorical: fee methodology and patent-valuation claims are information that lives almost entirely inside the regulated companies, and a regulator that relies on invited disclosure rather than compelled audit has limited ability to test whether a "reduced" fee reflects real cost savings or is simply repackaged. That is a legitimate design concern, not academic nitpicking — the JFTC's own history gives it teeth to worry about. Japan's Antimonopoly Act has produced only one Article 3 monopolization fine since 2010, a strikingly thin enforcement record next to South Korea's KFTC, which brought roughly 15 digital-platform cases in a comparable window (SCiDA Project analysis). If the JFTC's institutional instinct is caution, betting an entire ex ante regime on voluntary dialogue is a reasonable thing to worry about.
Why dialogue-first is still the right call
But the compliance reports themselves are the strongest evidence against the scholars' implied remedy — heavier-handed, EU Digital Markets Act-style enforcement. In seven and a half months, without a single structural remedy or headline fine, Japan got Apple to open iOS to third-party app stores for the first time anywhere it operates outside the EU, got Google to strip anti-steering restrictions from Play billing, and got both companies to ship OS-level browser and search choice screens. That is a faster behavioral shift than the DMA produced in its opening year in Brussels, where Apple's compliance with alternative app stores triggered a formal Commission investigation and specification proceeding rather than voluntary adoption. Dialogue-first regulation is not toothless by default — the JFTC issued a cease-and-desist order against Google in April 2025, before the MSCA even entered force, using its ordinary Antimonopoly Act powers (JFTC digital policy overview). The escalation path exists and has been used. What critics are really objecting to is the sequencing — remedy first, verify claims later — not the absence of any enforcement capacity.
Where the criticism should actually land
The professors are right that fee-calculation opacity is the weak seam in this model, and the JFTC's own public demand for "further explanation" on fee levels shows it recognizes the same gap. The fix is narrower than scaling up enforcement across the whole regime: require designated operators to submit fee and cost methodology to independent verification — a third-party audit clause, not a wholesale shift to adversarial litigation — while leaving the behavioral remedies (interoperability, choice screens, sideloading) on the current dialogue track where they are visibly working. Importing the DMA's more litigious posture wholesale would trade a functioning behavioral-change engine for the kind of multi-year specification fights Brussels is still running against Apple's own app-store terms.
Japan's experiment is barely eight months old. The right response to an information asymmetry on fees is a targeted disclosure fix, not abandoning a model that has already delivered more concrete platform-opening measures, faster, than most comparable regimes managed in their first year.
The JFTC's own framing is worth taking seriously: compliance reports reflect "the designated operators' perspective," not the Commission's endorsement — the regulator is explicitly keeping its options open.