“Apple has long relied on contractual restrictions rather than competition on the merits to fortify its monopoly power,” Kanter said. He pointed to emails between an Apple executive and then-CEO Steve Jobs in 2010, lamenting a Kindle ad where a user switches seamlessly between the Kindle app on an iPhone and an Android.
Apple was a “significant beneficiary” of the DOJ’s suit against Microsoft more than 20 years ago, said Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division. “The remedy paved the way for Apple to launch iTunes, iPod and eventually the iPhone.”
He described the new suit as a way “to protect competition and innovation for the next generation of technology.”
The new complaint “alleges that Apple has engaged in many of the same tactics that Microsoft used,” Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said, referencing the DOJ’s landmark antitrust case at the turn of the century.
Apple has “smothered an entire industry” by shifting from “revolutionizing the smartphone market to stalling its advancement,” according to Lisa Monaco.
Garland described how Apple “inserts itself into the process” of transactions through its digital wallets, when consumers may “prefer to share that information solely with their bank.”
“That is just one way in which Apple is willing to make the iPhone less secure and less private, in order to maintain its monopoly power,” Garland said.
The AG says it’s not just that the green texts between Android and iPhone devices are annoying, there’s also “limited functionality.”
“Videos are pixelated and grainy, and users cannot edit messages or see typing indicators,” Garland said.
“Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market, not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law,” Garland said.
He also referenced the so-called Apple tax that the company charges for in-app purchases.
Watch the press conference below as US Attorney General Merrick Garland lays out the case against Apple, and read more details right here.
Debates over green bubbles, iMessage, and RCS came to a head in this moment from the 2022 Code Conference when LiQuan Hunt asked Tim Cook about messaging across platforms. Leading to today, when Hunt’s question and Cook’s response came up on page 39 of the DOJ’s antitrust complaint against Apple.
In 2022, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked whether Apple would fix iPhone-to-Android messaging. ‘It’s tough,’ the questioner implored Mr. Cook, ‘not to make it personal but I can’t send my mom certain videos.’ Mr. Cook’s response? ‘Buy your mom an iPhone.’
Correction: it’s on page 39, right 92.
“There are things that we take a keen interest in, for instance, if the new Apple fee structure will de facto not make it in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA,” Margrethe Vestager tells Reuters. “That kind of thing is what we will be investigating.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vestager says she’s received “Quite a lot” of comments about how the DMA’s gatekeepers are complying with the EU’s new antitrust rules.
The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW.
26 groups including Public Knowledge and the Tech Oversight Project are raising alarms as Congress considers cuts to the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s budget. Language in the appropriations bill would “unravel” a recent law that allowed enforcers to raise money from merger filing fees, according to the letter shared exclusively with The Verge. It comes as the DOJ fights Google in two separate cases and is reportedly nearing the end of its probe into Apple.
[www.economicliberties.us]
