WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Four more U.S. states on Tuesday joined the Justice Department's lawsuit against Apple Inc alleging the iPhone maker is monopolizing smartphone markets, the department said in a statement. The four states are Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington, the Justice Department said. The lawsuit alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants.
I don’t understand how Apple can be a monopoly if there are other viable choices for smartphones. Are people just bitter about apple or is there some corrupt financial play behind the scenes?
It’s about the restrictions they put in place on those who have bought their products. They make it extremely hard to leave their ecosystem, overcharge for services, and prevent interoperability with other products.
They’re only just now allowing RCS to try getting out ahead of these lawsuits. But they still don’t allow side-loading (forcing developers to use their store so they can charge 30% on all sales), don’t allow third-party app stores, and don’t allow third-party browser engines (forcing everyone to reskin Safari).
Plus, in the US, Apple has 55% market share as just one company. The next highest is Samsung at 25%.
So yeah, they can play monopolistic games.
Thanks. I have android and had no idea it was that bad. I just figured people would stop buying iPhones if they didn’t like it but if it’s hard to migrate between systems, then that definitely sucks.
It’s hard to switch cults once you’ve started paying them to be part of it.
also see similar actions in europe
Insulting Iphone users for their broken screens and back glasses has been enough to avoid the monopoly.
There’s lots of stuff like enforcing WebKit for browsers, iCloud for background cloud syncing, subscription disadvantages (end trial for competitor = end of period, end trial for Apple = now), giving their 1st party native apps advantageous functionality competitors can’t (yet), etc.
This is a working list, I’ll be back
There’s also general gatekeeping of their developer tools which restricticts ports of software, and not following standards properly (USBc, sms).
Perhaps one day, other developers may be allowed into the holy land of JIT recompilation.
So you don’t understand what a monopoly is?
Because you don’t have to be the only player in the overall game to be a monopoly, just simply big and powerful enough to be unaffected by the other players which fits Apples description.
So Microsoft. Facebook Amazon
Precisely. This is why the EU is harder on these companies.
When you get big enough, there are different rules to ensure that you don’t distort a market by killing competition. That is anti-trust, and that is considered a monopoly.