The United States is going after Apple. According to The Guardian, “the lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to “engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct.”
Additionally, the article states that, “central to the case is whether Apple’s strategy of blocking rival companies from accessing various proprietary features such as its iMessage instant messaging service and Siri virtual assistant constitutes anticompetitive practices. The case will also examine whether Apple making its devices easily integrate with each other, but not with non-Apple products, creates unfair hardware limitations that block competitors from the market.”
The four specific anti-competitive actions in the case are as follows:
- Blocking innovation for apps in the form of suppressing super-apps
- Diminishing the functionality of non-Apple smartwatches
- Limiting third-party digital wallets
- Suppressing cross-platform messaging
While the case does not seem to directly address Apple’s App Store behavior – which has created a lot of animosity toward developers – many of the issues developers have in regard to Apple’s App Store may be addressed in point #1.
Regardless, the animosity toward Apple for its App Store behavior left them vulnerable to attack on various fronts, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken advantage of. And while we, personally, are dubious that Apple’s preferential treatment toward Apple product integration is illegal, we do think Apple’s behavior elsewhere could constitute anti-competitive practices.
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