The Filing
On July 21, 2026, eleven Japanese competition-law scholars submitted formal opinions to the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), arguing that Apple and Google "may not be fully complying" with the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA) and urging the regulator to tighten its oversight. The timing was deliberate: the JFTC is preparing to release the companies' second round of compliance reports under the law, and the professors wanted their concerns on the record before that disclosure. Lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have separately floated their own proposals to firm up enforcement, adding political weight to the academic push (MLex, July 21, 2026).
What the Law Actually Requires
The MSCA — Japan's answer to the EU's Digital Markets Act — was passed by the Diet in June 2024 and reached full implementation on December 18, 2025. It designates "specified software" across four categories: mobile operating systems, app stores, browsers, and search engines (JFTC, MSCA overview). Apple, iTunes K.K., and Google were named as the law's first — and so far only — regulated operators on March 26, 2025 (JFTC designation notice). Under Article 14, designated firms must file compliance reports, which the JFTC is statutorily required to publish (minus trade secrets). The first batch went public on February 17, 2026, describing each company's own account of how it opened alternative app stores, expanded third-party billing, and limited self-preferencing in search rankings (JFTC, Feb. 17, 2026 release).
The Scholars' Case, Stated Fairly
The professors' underlying concern deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as academic noise. A law that lets regulated firms self-report their own compliance, with the regulator publishing those accounts largely at face value, creates an obvious asymmetry: Apple and Google have far better information about their own systems than the JFTC does, and a self-certification regime is only as good as the incentive to be candid. Industry groups have already flagged specific friction points — the Mobile Content Forum criticized ambiguous fee structures and privacy terms in Apple and Google's revised app-distribution policies as early as January 2026, and app developers have continued pressing for clearer rules on external payment links months after implementation. If the underlying complaints are accurate, a law with no enforcement teeth beyond published self-reports risks becoming a compliance-theater exercise rather than a genuine competition remedy. That is a legitimate institutional design worry, not a manufactured one.
Why the Proportionate Read Still Holds
But the scholars' letter is an opinion, not a finding — and the JFTC's own posture cuts against the idea that enforcement has gone soft. JFTC Secretary-General Hiroo Iwanari has publicly described the agency's approach as prioritizing "discussion leading to improvement" over rushing to declare violations, framing the MSCA as a faster-acting complement to Japan's existing Antimonopoly Act rather than a replacement for negotiated compliance (Nikkei xtech interview). That is a defensible regulatory philosophy for a law seven months into full effect, regulating firms whose global compliance architecture spans dozens of jurisdictions simultaneously. Treating every unresolved developer complaint as evidence of bad-faith noncompliance ignores how genuinely novel some of these obligations are — mandated third-party app store access, forced interoperability with OS-level functions, and algorithm-disclosure requirements have no settled implementation playbook anywhere in the world, Japan included.
The stronger critique of the MSCA, made by analysts at the International Center for Law & Economics, is structural rather than about Apple or Google's specific conduct: the law imposes categorical, per se prohibitions instead of the case-by-case analysis Japan's Antimonopoly Act traditionally favors, and does so despite continued genuine rivalry between Apple's integrated ecosystem and Google's more open Android model (ICLE analysis). Rigid, bright-line rules — rather than the JFTC's stated dialogue-first approach — are what actually risk eroding the product differentiation, security architecture, and IP protections that make these ecosystems valuable to Japanese consumers and developers in the first place.
What Should Actually Happen Next
The proportionate response is not to ignore the scholars, nor to treat their letter as proof of violation. It is for the JFTC to do exactly what its structure already allows: scrutinize the second compliance reports rigorously, use its information-submission and complaint channels to test self-reported claims against independent developer accounts, and reserve formal findings of noncompliance for cases where the evidence — not the volume of academic pressure — supports them. A regulator that bends to political and scholarly pressure before its own review process concludes undermines the credibility of the dialogue-based model it has publicly committed to. A regulator that ignores credible, specific complaints about fee opacity and interoperability gaps undermines the law itself. The second compliance report, due for JFTC review in the coming weeks, is the actual test — not the letter that preceded it.