U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Senate Democrat on antitrust issues, said Apple’s AirTag tracker device unveiling was “timely” as it was the kind of conduct that her panel planned to discuss at an antitrust hearing on Wednesday at which Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer will testify as well as Kirsten Daru, general counsel for Tile.
Tile CEO CJ Prober’s statement, in part, following Apple’s AirTag unveiling:
We welcome competition, as long as it is fair competition. Unfortunately, given Apple’s well-documented history of using its platform advantage to unfairly limit competition for its products, we’re skeptical. And given our prior history with Apple, we think it is entirely appropriate for Congress to take a closer look at Apple’s business practices specific to its entry into this category. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues further in front of Congress tomorrow.
Apple announced on Tuesday that it would begin selling AirTags, which can be attached to items like car keys to help users find them when they are lost. The move puts Apple in direct competition with Tile, which has sold a similar tracking device for more than a decade.
“It’s timely given that this is the type of conduct that we’ll be talking about at the hearing,” Klobuchar said.
Apple said its AirTags were an outgrowth of its “FindMy” app, which is used for locating lost Apple devices and to share user locations and was introduced in 2010, before Tile’s founding. Apple last month opened its operating system up to third-party item trackers and said that Chipolo, a startup that competes with both Tile and Apple’s new AirTags, is using the system.
MacDailyNews Take: Competition is not illegal, so it’s actually not “timely” at all for an antitrust hearing.
Instead of actually attempting to compete, Tile wants U.S. Congress to do their work for them.
Tile could have done the work to produce a wider variety of trackers, with the latest UWB technology, and teamed with makers of bicycles, handbags, luggage, keychains, etc. around the world, but they did not. Therefore, they deserve exactly what’s coming to them: Scraping the bottom of the barrel for cheapskate Android settlers for as long as Tile manages to last.
Even with an 8 year head start, Tile wasn’t smart enough to make wide-ranging deals to get their trackers everywhere and sell 300 million units per year at $5 profit each. Instead, they wanted to sell 15 million/yr. at a profit of $25 each. So, because somebody built a better mousetrap, now the dummies at Tile run whining to idiot politicians – maybe they can all put their empty heads together and do some basic math, for a change. Way too late, but whatever.
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs