The Federal Court of Canada agreed on Wednesday to order Apple Inc’s Canadian subsidiary to turn over documents to the Competition Bureau to help investigate whether Apple unfairly used its market power to promote the sale of iPhones.
In seeking the order, the Competition Bureau said agreements Apple negotiated with wireless carriers may have cut into competition by encouraging the companies to maintain or boost the price of rival phones.
It’d be very welcome if the relationships between major OEMs and carriers, as well as between the individual carriers, came under very close scrutiny. In most countries, the wireless market is dominated by only a few major carriers and OEMs, creating a lot of opportunity for anti-competitive – and thus, anti-consumer – practices. Good on Canada for taking these steps, but other countries need to follow.
Look at whom filed the injunction and lobbied for it.
“If you can’t compete, legislate” – Milton Friedman.(about why free market capitalism is no longer practiced in the US in favour of cronyism and state intervention)
judgen,
I’m interested in your quote. In a way, both governments and private corporations have potential to stifle the free market. We can’t really argue that prior to corporation regulation that we had free markets in a meaningful sense, ie one that involves healthy competition. Instead we ended up with powerful industry moguls free to control entire markets, while everyone else was free to be controlled without viability for competition. Antitrust and other laws came about to combat serious abuses of market power that were going on (at least in America).
Would you agree that capitalism is at it’s best when there is lots of competition, and it is at it’s worst when there isn’t? I admit antitrust is blunt and hardly ideal, but what would be a better solution?
No matter who filed it, it’s in the public’s best interest to find out the truth. Note that Apple is not convicted, it’s an ongoing investigation.
The sad part is that it usually takes another big company to start these investigations.
It reminds me of the data volume limits in my country (Belgium). While most of western Europe functioned with proper data plans for years, we still had extremely low data limits (about 10GB/month, you could pay a lot extra per GB). The reason was simple: because monopolies can. Customers complained for years, set up petitions and campaigns but that didn’t change anything. Then one day Microsoft said its streaming services were unfairly disadvantaged. The government announced an investigation and within a month the limits were drastically increased and later even removed.
Edited 2014-12-18 16:44 UTC
Considering the EU launched a similar investigation more than a year and a half ago at the instigation of some carriers, I would say the carriers.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/27/apple-europe-competition-…
Considering it’s getting close to two years since the EU investigation began without a peep and that iPhone only has about 35% market share in Canada, I’d wager this goes no where.
Unfortunately, in Canada the inherent monopoly of Bell and Rogers in the wireless space has left little room for anyone to come in here. The few remaining competitors are very small or very regional or pay one of those 2 to use their networks.
Those 2 have the CRTC (our equivalent of the US FCC) wrapped around their collective finger. Nothing much will come of this, especially if the carriers are found to be partially guilty. It will get quietly buried and forgotten.
That’s why most Canadians were ecstatic when we heard that Verizon was thinking about coming up here. Get a real heavyweight competitor that would knock those 2 on their butts for once.
Edited 2014-12-18 15:17 UTC
There are 3 big cell phone companies in Canada: Bell, Rogers, and Telus.
And Rogers is the only company that has a truly nationwide cell network (excluding the Territories).
Bell and Telus share their networks with each other: Bell uses Telus towers in the West; Telus uses Bell towers in the East. Neither of them are truly nationwide, although it seems that way for users.
That is true, but overall they’re seen as the “Big 3” and they don’t give 2 cents about the customers. Until you don’t pay, then they care and they’re calling to have chats all the time.
In Australia the major carriers have to sell iPhones because they are popular, because there is little profit margin in them whenever you go to a store and talk to sales staff they try and sell an Android phone.
I would guess it is similar elsewhere.
Which doesn’t sound illegal — it merely sounds like needing to serve your customers despite your best wishes to extract greater profit by selling them crap they don’t want.