A Final Word From Luxembourg
On July 2, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed Google and Alphabet's last appeal in Case C-738/22 P, confirming a roughly €4.1 billion fine that the European Commission first imposed in 2018 (Court of Justice press release, 2 July 2026). The finding: Google used Android Mobile Application Distribution Agreements to require phone makers who wanted access to the Play Store to also pre-install Google Search and Chrome, and paid some manufacturers and carriers for exclusive Search placement (gHacks, 3 July 2026). The ruling is final. There is no further appeal.
European commentary has framed this as a story about search engines and browsers that never got a fair shot on Android in Brussels or Berlin. That framing misses where the bundling model actually shapes markets today: not in the EU, where Android's grip has loosened under the Digital Markets Act, but in the regions where Android is not one operating system among several — it is essentially the only one.
Where Android Actually Is the Market
In Africa, Android runs 84% of mobile devices as of June 2026 (StatCounter), and one manufacturer group dominates the hardware beneath it. Transsion — through Tecno, Infinix, and itel — held 47% of African smartphone shipments in Q1 2026, according to Omdia's Smartphone Market Pulse, after shipping 9.3 million units in the quarter (Tech-ish, 28 May 2026). Every one of those phones ships with the same Play Store default that the CJEU just spent eight years litigating over in Europe.
The mechanism the Commission and now the CJEU objected to — Play Store access conditioned on bundling Google's own apps and blocking manufacturers from shipping Android forks with alternative app stores pre-loaded — is not a historical artifact Google has since dismantled. It is the same architecture that made Play Store the default, and in practice the only, distribution channel on the budget Android devices that dominate African retail. A first-time smartphone buyer in Lagos or Nairobi buying a sub-$100 Tecno or itel handset is transacting inside exactly the contractual structure the CJEU just found unlawful — just without a competition authority that has ruled on it locally.
The Case the Regulators Are Making
To be fair to the Commission's theory, bundling isn't inherently sinister. Pre-installing a search engine and app store on a phone saves low-income, first-time smartphone users from a confusing setup process, and Google's app review and security scanning genuinely protect low-bandwidth users who can't easily verify a sideloaded APK is safe. South Africa's Competition Commission, in its July 2023 Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry final report, did not call for ripping out the Play Store — it found something narrower but still real: Google Play and Apple's App Store impose commission fees on paid-app developers with no competitive constraint, anti-steering terms stop developers from directing users to their own payment pages, and neither store curates a South African storefront despite meaningful local revenue (ENSafrica, July 2023; Competition Commission of South Africa). That is a proportionate, evidence-based complaint about fee-setting and steering — not a demand to break the bundle that keeps entry-level Android phones usable out of the box.
Why Proportion Still Matters
Where the CJEU's reasoning gets harder to import wholesale into African markets is the remedy question. Europe's fix, under the Digital Markets Act, is default choice screens and mandated sideloading for users who already have reliable connectivity, app literacy, and a functioning consumer-protection backstop if a sideloaded app turns out to be malware. None of those preconditions are guaranteed for a first-time Android buyer on a Tecno handset in a market with patchy 4G and no dedicated digital-fraud unit. A poorly sequenced African mandate to unbundle Play Store defaults could just as easily open a vector for scam apps as it opens a door for competing app stores — and Nigeria's FCCPC, Kenya's competition authority, and South Africa's Competition Commission are still building the enforcement capacity Brussels has had for a decade.
The honest reading of the CJEU ruling for Africa isn't that African regulators should now copy Europe's remedy. It's that the underlying conduct — conditioning Play Store access on bundling — has now been confirmed unlawful by the EU's highest court, which strengthens the evidentiary hand of any African regulator that wants to pursue the narrower, already-identified harms: uncontested commission fees, anti-steering clauses, and the absence of local storefront curation that South Africa's Competition Commission flagged three years ago. Fee transparency and anti-steering relief are remedies proportionate to where African app markets actually are. A European-style teardown of the default bundle is not, yet.