UK Edition
The US government has accused Apple of illegally abusing a monopoly over the smartphone market in a landmark legal challenge to the iPhone maker.
The Justice Department, alongside 16 states, sued the tech giant on Thursday claiming it prevents users from switching to cheaper rival Android phones by restricting apps that could challenge its power.
It is the latest in a wave of landmark monopoly abuse cases from the US government seeking to rein in big tech, and its first against Apple.
Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, said: “We allege that Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market, not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law.
“If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”
Apple said that the case risked the US government interfering in how technology is made, and vowed to challenge it.
A spokesman said: “If successful, [this lawsuit] would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple – where hardware, software, and services intersect.
“It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.”
The US charges centre on claims that Apple deliberately undermines software and accessories that would create a more even playing field between iPhones and Android devices.
This includes refusing to make its iMessage app compatible with Android phones, and preventing rival messaging apps such as WhatsApp from sending text messages.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit said many smartphone users feel social stigma and exclusion when messaging using an Android phone.
It said: “Apple has made the quality of cross-platform messaging worse, less innovative, and less secure for users so that its customers have to keep buying iPhones.”
The lawsuit also claims that Apple has restricted so-called “super apps”, which allow users to carry out multiple tasks within a single app, for fear that their adoption would make users less dependent on iPhones and enable easier switching between devices
It quotes one Apple executive as saying: “Imagine buying a [expletive] Android for 25 bux [sic] at a garage sale and it works fine… And you have a solid cloud computing device. Imagine how many cases like that there are.”
US regulators have launched lawsuits against Google, Meta and Amazon in recent years and the case against Apple had been widely expected.
The company is also facing new scrutiny in Europe, which has recently introduced laws seeking to rein in big tech’s power. The EU will announce its own probes into Apple and Google under the new Digital Markets Act in the coming days, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.