U.S. appeals court revives antitrust lawsuit against Apple

Reuters ^ | Thursday, January 12, 2017 | By Stephen Nellis and Dan Levine

[Swordmaker]

iPhone app purchasers may sue Apple Inc over allegations that the company monopolized the market for iPhone apps by not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling revives a long-simmering legal challenge originally filed in 2012 taking aim at Apple’s practice of only allowing iPhones to run apps purchased from its own App Store. A group of iPhone users sued saying the Cupertino, California, company's practice was anticompetitive.

Apple had argued that users did not have standing to sue it because they purchased apps from developers, with Apple simply renting out space to those developers. Developers pay a cut of their revenues to Apple in exchange for the right to sell in the App Store.

[texas booster]

Only allowing purchases through the Apple app store also greatly increases the security of iPhone apps.

While leaving developers at the tender mercies of Apples’ politics, it still beats the Chinese Android model of potential malware in every API.

[Swordmaker]

This is a resurrection of an earlier antiTrust action brought under the theory that Apple was fixing the prices of iPhone and iPad apps artificially higher than the free market would set them by forcing customers only to buy through the curated Apple App Store. They want to force Apple to allow a free and open Wild West market where anything goes, essentially forcing Apple to jailbreak the whole iOS ecosystem by declaring it an illegal monopoly on Apple iOS apps. This would, of course completely compromise the security of the entire iOS ecosystem which is based on a curated app source. — PING!

Ninth Circuit Court Opens Apple To AntiTrust Suit
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[Flick Lives]

... not allowing users to purchase them outside the App Store, leading to higher prices, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.

Higher prices? Most apps are $1. Many are free. Typical of the government; prosecute a public company over charging a $1 while the government has no problem raising the rate on Obamacare by $1,000s.

[Wuli]

Selling an iPhone app only through an iPhone store has zero to do with insuring it is secure on an iPhone. That is done in the development of the app, which can be checked with Apple before the app is released, and Apple software on the iPhone can verify an app being downloaded was approved or not.

The ONLY purpose for requiring an app to ONLY be sold in an Apple store or from their on-line store, is monopoly practices of Apple.

[roadcat]

The ONLY purpose for requiring an app to ONLY be sold in an Apple store or from their on-line store, is monopoly practices of Apple.

False. If you want, you can write your own OS to run the iPhone and load your own custom apps. Good luck with that. Horror stories everywhere regarding Android phones and apps

Android: "The application ... (process com.android.mms) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again."

The reason for requiring an app to be sold in Apple's app store is to prevent problems like those rife with other non-Apple products.