The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
The filing is filled with stuff like this (and I’m paraphrasing here):
The easy counterargument to that is that their biggest competitor, Samsung, sells their top end phone for $1,659. It seems like a crazy claim, how could Apple be charging so much, right? But that’s the norm in the market.
The filing is filled with goofy stuff like that. I’m not cherry picking for the dumbest arguments, just for the shortest and easiest to understand one that’s near the front so you won’t have to read far in to check it for yourself. It is a nearly 90 page court filing after all.
Yep that’s 100% a bogus/bad claim. Do you think that these bad claims will invalidate their case though? I’ve seen several mentions that seem to have grounds. Restrictions on app store, digital wallets and hardware all seem problematic from a surface level read. Thoughts?
So let’s say the specific restrictions are unique to apple (there’s a good argument that they’re not, but for the sake of making the best case possible let’s assume they are), the state would still need to prove that they amounted to creation of monopoly conditions in apples favor in the smartphone market.
That’s the language they’re using.
It doesn’t seem like an argument that can be won.
Take the messaging section, I’m paraphrasing again:
Later in the same section
So which is it? Is apple making an unprofitable mistake by not providing a cross platform imessage implementation or are they greedily and monopolistically preventing that same to great profit? It literally can’t be both.
There are a bunch of quotes in that section which do a great job of showing how apple executives want to make the most money for the company, but not a lot that tie that desire into monopolistic control over the smartphone market.
It really seems like a case they’re not trying to win. I don’t know what the play is, but this can’t be the best the doj can do…
Hmmm. That doesn’t make sense I feel like I’m missing some key context. Perhaps they meant it doesn’t help their case? I’ll have to read the filing. I know that iMessage has been an issue simply because Apple has refused to comply with other (text) standards that their competitors have implemented. That could be stifling innovation in the market due to their share of it but perhaps that is in the filing elsewhere. I suppose a lot of this evidence would be actually presented when the case comes to trial though, right? How indicative of the case is the filing at this juncture? If it is as poor as you posit, would it even be evident at this point?
I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take this as some expert legal analysis, and the doj arguing against anyone isn’t exactly simple country law shit to begin with, but generally speaking you want to have a cohesive argument that doesn’t double back and eat its own tail in your initial filing.
Like, if I were to file suit against you I might make some claims that I don’t fully back up but are at least feasible. I might not say that I have incontrovertible video evidence that you snuck over my fence on February 18th and fucked my aunt junes prize cactus but it’s normal for me to say I’m gonna show that you are behind instances of trespass and damage to flora in the area.
Then maybe you wig out at the possibility of being outed and settle and we never have to go to court and avoid all the costs.
Of course this isn’t a simple dispute over damages between some poor schmuck and a cactus fucker. Is it reasonable to think that the state is pursuing some other agenda when it files lawsuits that seem absurd on the face of em? Idk.
It’s certainly possible that the state has more and greater evidence to bring to the table but to what end?
I think the only thing we can say for sure is that it’s not for the purposes of “helping” the “consumer”.
Those are tough to disentangle, could they make money by having a cross platform messaging app and charging for it? Yes. Is that more or less than the money apple predicts they make by making it exclusive, luring/keeping others to/on iphone? I would like to believe apple’s internal conversation represents how they view things more than the government saying it would benefit them to open it up.
I definitely think they have weaker and stronger items in here.
Monopoly isn’t illegal the DOJ says. Abuse of monopoly power is. We can all discuss what constitutes a monopoly but I’m putting my money on the DOJ’s definition and interpretation of that definition actually holding water vs. common conception.
I find the most compelling things in their suit to be things that don’t really have a technical reason but a competition limiting one, like:
denying third party devices access to APIs that apple devices can access (e.g. no texting replies from anything but an apple watch)
restricting use of NFC/tap to pay to apple wallet which then requires any financial institution use it instead of making their own app -and apple charges for it of course (0.15%, they apparently made 200 billion USD off of this in some specified time period)
permissions for apples own apps are treated differently than for third party apps (you can’t restrict permissions on core apps for some things I guess - this is second/third hand reading for me from other sources)
That sort of stuff. It’s like, if you allow interoperability/third party access (i.e. a marketplace) then you’re obliged to keep it fair if you’re of a certain size/power.
I don’t see those examples being able to withstand scrutiny. Apples lawyers will find some way the speech to text api for wearables isn’t good enough for third party use, point out how all those other financial institutions have had high profile breaches but apple wallet hasn’t and that they can’t be expected to develop their own native software using clean room processes and the court will order them to let people text on pebble and throw everything else out.
Remember that the legal framework differentiating apples walled garden ecosystem from a free market was established about ten years ago around these precise concerns. This is already largely settled law, what’s up to decide seems to be the exact extent of it.