Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#11

Post by D13Fd »

justrealist wrote: post #2

IANAL but it's baffling to me that this one took so long. This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time. Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that "free" could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?

How is this even a monopoly? That's like saying "Walmart has a monopoly on selling products at its stores." There are thousands of competing phones with their own software and app stores.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#13

Post by gnicholas »

> The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company.

As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choice, messaging, and Apple wallet. FWIW, I am a former lawyer and spent a little time doing antitrust law for the CA DOJ, a long time ago. Just my two cents.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#18

Post by lokar »

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#19

Post by FredPret »

Perhaps a hardware engineer can help me out here, but I don't think Apple makes an unreasonable margin on the iPhone. Overall they make 26% [0]. Really quite reasonable considering highly-developed proprietary software is bundled with the device

They make a lot of money because they sell * a lot * of iPhones.

[0] https://valustox.com/AAPL

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#20

Post by ocdtrekkie »

gnicholas wrote: post #13

> The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company. As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to brows…

They will make that argument, and the government will point out that Apple is trying to charge 27% everywhere those choice decisions were taken away, pretty conclusively proving... it's all about collecting the rent.
Post reply on HN