The US Department of Justice and 16 states recently sued Apple for allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly by making consumers dependent on its products.
What is the problem with this case? Let's discuss it!
Apple's Alleged Illegal Monopoly
“Buy your mother an iPhone,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told a reporter who complained about his mother's difficulty playing iPhone videos on her Android phone.
Tim Cook's controversial remarks at the Code Conference 2022 seem to summarize the alleged monopoly practices carried out by Apple, practices which are being seriously investigated by the US Department of Justice.
After holding several meetings with Apple, in early 2024 the Department of Justice began investigating Apple's alleged violations of antitrust law.
The Department of Justice stated that Apple is suspected of using unhealthy methods, such as blocking its competitors from using iPhone features, blocking financial services from using payment services on the iPhone, suppressing the quality of messaging services between iPhone and Android, and blocking the "superapps" feature.
In terms of financial services, for example, Apple does not allow third parties to access payment services on the iPhone, so users must use Apple Pay to make transactions. Meanwhile, for its smartwatch products, Apple is suspected of making it difficult to connect iPhones to competitors' smartwatches.
Basically, the Department of Justice is suing Apple for creating such an ecosystem to limit consumer access to other products.
On this basis, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that Apple “created a monopoly on the smartphone market in an unfair manner that violates antitrust law.”
Responding to Apple's powerful influence and resources, he added, "When an institution with such vast resources undermines the American economy, we choose to protect the interests of our citizens."
Not Only Apple
Allegations of violations of antitrust law have also been made against Google and Amazon. In December 2023, for example, Google was found to have an illegal monopoly on the Google Play Store.
The judge said that Google maintained this monopoly by carrying out illegal practices between the Google Play Store and Google Play Billing through the Project Hug agreement, which requires application developers to use both products if their applications want to appear on Google Play.
For this violation, Google was required to pay compensation of 700 million US dollars to Epic Games. This win, according to Epic Games, is a win for app developers and consumers around the world.
Not only Apple and Google, but Amazon has also faced similar allegations.
The largest e-commerce platform in the US was sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged monopoly and unfair competition by discriminating against third parties, for example by requiring sellers to buy their internal logistics services or forcing sellers to set product prices lower than on other platforms.
Hopefully, this can be a lesson for all of us to always obey existing laws and regulations so that our business can avoid issues like this in the future.
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