Apple, the target of EU antitrust investigations into key segments of its business, on Tuesday rejected accusations of market dominance, saying the company faces strong competition in every category.
Earlier this month, the European Commission opened investigations into Apple’s App Store and mobile payment system Apple Pay, concerned about its role as a gatekeeper to its lucrative platform.
“We compete with a wide variety of companies, Google, Samsung, Huawei, Vivo, LG, Lenovo and many more,” Daniel Matray, head of Apple’s App Store and Apple Media Services, told a Forum Europe online event.
“In fact, Apple does not have a dominant position in any market, and we face strong competition in every category, in tablets, wearables, desktop and notebook computers, maps, music, payments, messaging, and more,” he said… Matray said the App Store has boosted competition, rather than harmed rivals. “In the nearly 12 years since the App Store debuted, the best measure of its success is the dynamism it has unleashed and the state of the app economy today,” he said.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
As we’ve written umpteen times, since Apple does not have a monopoly in any market in which they participate, there is no legal basis for antitrust action against Apple
So, Apple’s case, there is no monopoly (which is legal by the way), much less monopoly abuse (which is explicitly impossible given the nonexistence of a monopoly). You cannot abuse a monopoly and therefore face antitrust action when you do not have a monopoly in the first place.
Worldwide smartphone OS market share, May 2020 (via StatCounter:
• Android: 72.60%
• iOS: 26.72%
By the way: On every iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad, and iPad mini box, the potential buyer is informed of requirements prior to purchase. If the customers didn’t like the terms that came along with Apple devices, they should have opted for a pretend iPhone, fake iPod, or iPad knockoff from any one of a seemingly unlimited parade of Android peddlers. Then they could blissfully infest their fake iPhones with malware from a variety of sources.
Apple built the Mac. Apple built the iPhone. Apple built the iPad. Apple built the App Store. Apple created the most verdant ecosystem ever created for developers by far. Only the losers and those developers who can’t read and follow simple rules are whining incessantly.
If anything, Apple takes too little of a cut for all that the App Store provides developers. — MacDailyNews, June 21, 2020