Apple Sued by Department of Justice in Antitrust Case Over iPhone Monopoly
The Department of Justice sued Apple over accusations of creating a monopoly in the smartphone market. The lawsuit covers anti-competition practices in terms of Apple devices, browsers, advertising, and FaceTime. Learn more about the lawsuit.
- The U.S. Justice Department has sued Apple in an antitrust lawsuit, stating that Apple’s monopoly in the smartphone market has been detrimental to developers, customers, and competing companies.
- The lawsuit targets Apple’s closed platform business model even as regulators worldwide are increasingly scrutinizing tech companies.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and 15 states jointly sued Apple, alleging that the tech company has violated antitrust laws, creating a monopoly in the smartphone market, driving prices, and hurting customers and other competing companies operating in the country. The suit continues the trend of governments worldwide increasingly scrutinizing Big Tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.
According to the Justice Department, Apple charges customers up to $1,500 for a single iPhone, making substantially larger profits than its competitors. Furthermore, Apple’s fees to partners, including developers and financial institutions, are designed to raise the price for consumers, highlighting Apple’s alleged exclusionary and anticompetitive business practices.
See More: Apple in Discussions With Google To Integrate Gemini AI Into iPhones
According to the complaint, Apple has used its closed platform model to charge users a premium for tech products while completely controlling how a device is used and works. The DoJ aims to give iPhone users a broader choice of how apps interact with Apple’s device hardware. A breakup or reduction of the company’s size is possible if the DoJ is successful.
The suit also alleges that Apple makes it harder for consumers to learn about competitors and makes efforts to suppress technologies that could increase competition in the smartphone market, which has allowed the company to make more than $200 billion in iPhone sales in 2023. So far, the charges laid by the DoJ on Apple are unclear.
Apple denied all allegations, stating that if the suit were successful, it would hurt the company’s ability to develop products that customers expect from the Apple brand. The suit, if successful, can substantially hamper the company, which has already faced significant setbacks in the EU owing to the recently enforced Digital Markets Act. Apple’s share prices fell by more than 4% following the news of the lawsuit.
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Image source: Shutterstock
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