The old adage goes that success breeds contempt, and the same can be said about how governments view successful companies.
Bureaucrats often look for ways to punish them. They do it so much that I'm starting to think that every time a bureaucrat looks at a thriving company, they say, “No. They're different.” no way. It's not on my watch. ”
One of the weapons that governments like to use against corporations is antitrust litigation. By filing these, government officials accuse companies that have grown significantly thanks to popular products or services of being anticompetitive. The government's hope is then to break up the companies or fundamentally change their business models.
Federal authorities have taken this approach against many companies, including against tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google. On March 21st, they chose a new victim in their witch hunt: Apple. The federal government, along with 16 state attorneys general, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the technology company. Like many suits before it, it's ridiculous.
“We argue that Apple maintains monopoly power in the smartphone market not just by continuing to compete on merit, but by violating federal antitrust laws,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release. . There appear to be two sides to the lawsuit against Apple. The Department of Justice says Apple has monopoly power and perpetuates and expands that power through anticompetitive means, namely restricting which applications can run on an iPhone and which applications can be transferred to his non-Apple devices. It is claimed that
There are several issues to analyze here. First, does Apple really have an illegal monopoly on the smartphone market? I don't think so. When I Googled “monopoly” on Android devices, Apple's main competitor, a monopoly is defined as “exclusive ownership or control over the supply or trade of goods or services.” Of course, this is a layperson's definition, not a legal definition, and is amorphous, leading to dubious litigation.
This aside, Apple doesn't dominate the smartphone market any more than Google dominates the internet. You have to compete with many search engines and email providers. Similarly, Apple has to contend with strong competitors like his Android devices mentioned above. It is true that Apple holds a large market share (approximately 61% in the US and 39% in Android). But this is proof that no company has a complete monopoly on the market. Rather, this just highlights that with two different business models being successful, consumers still have a choice. These are not characteristics of a monopoly.
The Justice Department's other complaints are a little more complicated. The New York Times reports that their lawyers claim that Apple “violated antitrust laws by making customers dependent on the iPhone and less likely to switch to competing devices.” . “The tech giant has blocked other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products, such as digital wallets, which could reduce the value of the iPhone.”
The core of the case, therefore, revolves around Apple's attempts to retain customers and restrict access to competitors' applications. I'm not a businessman, but it seems unreasonable to criticize a company trying to retain customers. That's how everything from small shops to large corporations stay in business, but Apple deliberately limits the applications available on its devices to create a vertically integrated system to retain customers. I wonder if it is? That is for the court to decide, but there may be other issues as well.
According to Apple's website, the company's business model focuses on security and applications that are meant to work seamlessly on devices. Applications that may not be integrated with Apple's iOS software or that may pose a cybersecurity risk to customers are prohibited from being installed. Apple also promotes its own applications, some of which obviously don't work on other operating systems. Why should you do that?
Again, this is Apple's business model, and it seems to be pretty popular, and if consumers aren't interested in it, they're free to vote with their feet and switch their loyalty. Many have chosen to take their business elsewhere. According to Statista, as of 2022, approximately 133.4 million Americans, including you guys, were his Android smartphone users. It doesn't seem like Apple enjoys a monopoly.
Apple, of course, intends to fight the lawsuit. This appears to be the government's latest salvo against successful private companies, but given the government's anti-business ethos, it likely won't be the last.