Justice Department lawyers are in the early stages of drafting a potential antitrust complaint against Apple, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter — a sign that a long-running investigation may be nearing a decision point and a suit could be coming soon.
Various groups of prosecutors inside DOJ are assembling the pieces for a potential lawsuit, the individual said, adding that the department’s antitrust division hopes to file suit by the end of the year.
[…]The Justice Department has been investigating Apple since 2019 over allegations that it abused its market power to stifle smaller tech companies, including app developers and competing hardware makers. As the investigation has progressed, a suit has become increasingly likely, but the move to drafting sections of the suit is a significant step forward in the process.
Finally.
“Finally”?… Seriously???
Apple has nothing even close to a monopoly in ANY market.
Before someone says that they have exclusive control over their ecosystem, then OS News should also be brought up on antitrust charges for having exclusive control over the content they publish and my news web site has been harmed because they have given my publishing company ZERO access and it was harmed as a result.
Apple isn’t consistent in their app rules. That’s not an anti-trust charge but it’s SUPER-problematic.
haus,
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/us-smartphone-market-share
“a market share of ninety percent is enough to constitute a monopoly”
https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2
haus,
Saying that ninety percent is enough to constitute a monopoly is not the logical equivalent to saying anything less than ninety percent isn’t a monopoly. It’s weird that of all the cases that are referenced in your link, you chose one merely because of the high percentage and not because it sells your case.
You would have been better off using one of these quotes since at least they’re talking about a minimum market share.
The thing is US antitrust laws don’t actually have a hard and set rule on required marketshare, the legislation was written more in terms of the abuse of dominant positions and individual courts have some leeway. This was taken from your link…
So turning back to apple, it’d be incredibly naive to believe that antitrust is about a simple number and that’s all. If the case goes to court, it’s going to be a lot more complex than that and they will be looking at whether apple has been abusing it’s position and stifling market competition.
haus,
US “anti-trust” laws are not about market monopoly, but rather about protecting consumer competition.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/antitrust-law.asp
One company can naturally grow to 100% in the market, and still be okay. One example: Sirius / XM in satellite radio systems. They were allowed to combine, since satellite compete with online streaming in the vehicles.
However even smaller companies can be subject to government action if they were believed to stop competition to foster.
The biggest example is the Bell System (AT&T). The reason they broke them up back in the day was because they stopped newcomers on the market. They leased the telephones, and prevented any third party headset manufacturing. They set long distance rates, and prevented small towns from having their own infrastructure, and so on.
There’s a 100% duopoly between Android and iOS in the mobile market, as combined these two OSes are installed on more than 99% of smartphones/tablets.
And while you can sideload APKs on Android, no such (easy and free) option exists for iOS. You can pay Apple $99 for a developer license and have your own app installed but it’s out of reach for 99.9% of Apple users, IOW useless/doesn’t exist.
“Before someone says that they have exclusive control over their ecosystem, then OS News should also be brought up on antitrust charges for having exclusive control over the content they publish and my news web site has been harmed because they have given my publishing company ZERO access and it was harmed as a result.”
Except that device access is orders of magnitude more restrictive than website access – no one switches phone (let alone ecosystem) for years, whilst everyone switches websites within seconds regularly.
This might be one of the worst analogies I’ve ever seen. Kudos for having the patience to respond in detail.
Things like normal installation of applications on iPhone and not owning Apple 30% up front when developing for their platform. Repairing an iPhone in local repair shop. Apple will comply to all of this and they can’t do much about it. But it is fair to say it’s taking regulators unreasonable long amounts of time.
Geck,
I agree, but for better or worse we live in a world where abusive/anticompetitive behaviors are allowed to continue unabated for an extremely long time before anything is done. What’s fascinating is that even it they eventually loose an antitrust case, it may still have been “worth it” on a balance sheet. For the companies involved it’s no so much a question of ethics, so much as one of cost and benefits. Heck paying a billion dollar fine could be a bargain if the abusive behavior yielded more billions over several years.
In the UK, the law gives courts the power to disqualify individual directors of companies that broke competition law from being a director of any company for up to 14 years. The idea is that by personally penalising senior management, the law changes the cost-benefit calculus. It’s mainly been used against small companies so far, but it is probably only a matter of time before it is used against big tech.