Posted on 03/21/2024 8:33:24 AM PDT by bitt
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors and stifles innovation.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to “engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct.”
The lawsuit — which was also filed with 16 state attorneys general — is the latest example of the Justice Department’s approach to aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust law that officials say is aimed at ensuring a fair and competitive market, even as it has lost some significant anticompetition cases.
Apple called the lawsuit “wrong on the facts and the law” and said it “will vigorously defend against it.”
President Joe Biden has called for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to vigorously enforce antitrust statutes. The increased policing of corporate mergers and business deals has been met with resistance from some business leaders who have said the Democratic administration is overreaching, but it’s been lauded by others as long overdue.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Perhaps some people in this debacle have shorted AAPL, which went from an up tick yesterday of 178.66 to today’s 172 and falling.
I wonder what Apple did to piss off the Biden Regime? Of course, it is possible that this is just a “friendly” suit for the purpose of quickly entering into an agreed judgment limiting what President Trump can later do by regulations or executive orders (e.g, give some sort of backdoor protection to Apple’s China suppliers or to mandate Apple hire illegal aliens). Democrats do it all the time to mandate all sorts of restrictions and to funnel tax money to favored groups. Time will tell.
I’ve never owned an Apple phone or tablet and never had a problem finding an Android phone or tablet I preferred. I do wish that there were more alternatives to Apple and Google (Android).
A better case could probably be made that Apple and Google have conspired to jointly monopolize the market (though Google was smart to open up Android to other manufacturers). Of course facts and law don’t matter when Democrats are waging Lawfare, just ask Fanny Willis and Letitia James.
This problem is nothing a little check to the Biden re-election PACs won't cure...
Both the US & EU hate Apple because of its privacy policy ingrained in its eco system. They both are after OTHER-PEOPLES’-MONEY and Apple is a plump target.
Not quite a monopoly. But on their way. Samsung is the only significant challenger left. LG called it quits years ago
My phone wasn’t cheap, it was free
I moved to mac long before there were ‘apps.’ I went through MS-DOS, DR-DOS, early linux versions, minix, trying to get Solaris to run on a 386 processor, etc. When Mac came out with os x (2001?), which was based on BSD, i switched. FInally a solid Unix/posix system that also did all the consumer stuff well (browser, audio, graphics, word processing). I have an iphone now just because it works well with my mac.
In the house we have windows, linux, mac, ios, android, etc in part so my children can celebrate diversity.
Apple has a monopoly on profits from cellphones. Everybody else is just nibbling at the edges.
My children also like my Atari 800.
My technology challenged wife has an Apple. As for myself, I love my Nokia. My wife is leaning towards a Nokia when her Iphone dies.
Right...so you of all should know Macs were never a big dev platform until the iPhone took off and they required a mac to publish to the app store.
If Apple (50% of smart phones in the U.S. in 2022) is a “monopoly” in smart phones, then the other 50% (brands that make Android smart phones) of U.S. smart phone sales is just a mirage???
I don’t own an apple because I don’t care for them. I find them confusing. But my complaint with ALL phones is in being forced to utilize theìr stuff. I want to see phones like computers where you can delete what you don’t want including the entire operating system, and put something else.
I hate it that you can’t delete samsung browser or facebook.
Some phones can be rooted, but the new operating system frequently runs into problems with utilizing hardware. Like not being able to text or make phone calls, or hear sound. But not all phones can be rooted. And then, the process is so delicate and persnickity.
It took years for developers to figure out how root a $50 ZTE.
We pay for the hardware, it belongs to us. Like any computer, we should be able to put on and remove any software on our devices.
I have an old laptop...well over 7 years old, that I dumped windows on and replaced it with linux giving that slow beast new pep and new life.
How about hardware drivers? Many won’t release them to linux so that you can operate your computer with something other than windows.
Those are the kinds of issues that need correction.
I hadn’t followed market share for developers but for me and the people i worked with we were almost exclusively either on solaris or mac since the late 1990s. Nearly all of my work was in open source or from scratch development. I only did .NET (or whatever its predecessor was called - ADO?) for a brief period in the 90s.
No, it was because with OS X, Apple moved to a solid, true UNIX operating system.
This meant all the tried and true UNIX-isms that developers used on workstations were now available on laptops, ones that ALSO ran MS Word, Excel, easily ran web-based multimedia (which used to be sketchy on UNIX), etc.
LMAO. If that’s the case Linux would have already been a great dev platform.
You know it was the iphone app deal. BTW: If OSX is so great why did photoshop apps go to windows and become more popular than on Macs. Used to be Macs were the artist platform?
iPhone vs Android Stats (Highlights) As of early 2024, Android has a 70.69% market share worldwide.
In the US, iPhones hold a market share of 60.77%. More than 1 billion iPhones and over 3 billion Android devices are currently active.
Android smartphones accounted for 56% of all smartphone sales worldwide in Q4 2023.Mar 13, 2024
https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
Holy cow, are you out of touch!!!
If you want on or off the Apple/Mac/iOS Ping List, Freepmail me.
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