Apple looks to be prevailing in an “antitrust” trial vs. Epic Games over Apple’s App Store agreements and fees.
Michael Liedtke for The Associated Press:
But the tech giant’s apparent edge has been carved out amid nagging questions about the financial vise it holds people in when they buy digital services on iPhones, iPads and iPods.
Apple has collected a 15% to 30% commission on those in-app purchases for the past 13 years, fueling a moneymaking machine that has helped the company increase its market value from about $150 billion in 2008 to more than $2 trillion today.
MacDailyNews Take: As if the sale of 1+ billion iPhones, iPads, Macs, etc. aren’t responsible for Apple’s valuation. No, it’s the relatively paltry take from standard App Store fees. Give us a break, AP.
Those apps avoid a commission when their customers pay for their services through other options, such as a web browser. But Apple forbids apps from posting any links or making any other suggestions that steer people toward those other alternatives.
MacDailyNews Take: Remarkably, to the AP lie machine, at least, Apple does exactly the same thing as any other store on earth – all of which bar advertising other stores within them, certainly for free.
The anti-steering provision prompted Epic Games, the maker of the popular video game Fortnite, to sue Apple last year and set the stage for the trial now approaching the end of its second week in an Oakland, California, courtroom.
MacDailyNews Take: Which, when all is said and done, Epic Games will rightfully lose.
To prevail, Epic will have to persuade U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that Apple’s app store has become a monopoly that has enabled the Cupertino, California, company to engage in price gouging…
Antitrust expert Herbert Hovenkamp, a law professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said he doubts Gonzalez Rogers will agree with Epic’s narrow market definition. And that, he said, gives Apple the clear upper hand in the case so far. “This is a case about market power, so even if there is bad behavior going on, it won’t make a difference if Apple isn’t (judged) a monopolist,” Hovenkamp told The Associated Press.
MacDailyNews Take: This trial is a ginned up farce and deserves to end with an Epic failure.