DOJ Sues Apple

[NATI BENGALS]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/21/doj-sues-apple-over-iphone-monopoly.html

"The Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday, saying its iPhone ecosystem is a monopoly that drove its “astronomical valuation” at the expense of consumers, developers and rival phone makers."

I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Merrick Garland has made a lot of bad decisions imo. And I'll be glad when he is gone. But with this Apple case and regulating corporate behemoths... Glad someone is looking at it. Because I remember hearing about Apple paying out for intentionally slowing old phones in a previous settlement.

But this one. IDK?

[Goalpost]

Apple Quarterly Revenue
(Millions of US $)
2023-12-31 $119,575
2023-09-30 $89,498
2023-06-30 $81,797
2023-03-31 $94,836
2022-12-31 $117,154
2022-09-30 $90,146
2022-06-30 $82,959
2022-03-31 $97,278
2021-12-31 $123,945
2021-09-30 $83,360
2021-06-30 $81,434
2021-03-31 $89,584
2020-12-31 $111,439

Apple's quarterly revenue is certainly impressive. But in reality, as far as trend, its revenue has been described by many(most) as flat.

[JustWinBaby]

"Monopoly" is a difficult to determine, and evolving, criteria.  The old "standard" was 60% of the market, but they've repeatedly expanded the definition of a market to include substitutes (i.e. Youtube's market is not just online video, it's market includes all video with Cable and movies...sometimes even more broadly than that).

IMO, it's become very lax over the years and many mergers that were anti-competitive should have been disallowed.  While there's "competition" in many areas of their business, the big tech companies have been gobbling up all the start-ups that would diversify the market and increase competition.

But as for the IPhone being a monopoly, that's clearly not true as I believe Samsung is the largest global producer of phones.  There may have been a case back in the early 00s and 10s before Android launched, but that ship has long sailed.

Although the way Apple sort of locks in consumers to their ecosystem is a different issue.