US sues Apple in wide-ranging iPhone monopoly case

AFP | Washington

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The US Department of Justice sued Apple yesterday for illegally maintaining a monopoly for its iPhone by stifling competition and imposing exorbitant costs on consumers. The lawsuit, also brought by multiple US states, attacked the iPhone for raking in hundreds of billions of dollars by making it difficult for consumers to switch away to cheaper smartphones and devices.

The long anticipated case against Apple sees the company founded by Steve Jobs in 1976 clash with Washington after largely escaping US government scrutiny for nearly a half century.

It joins Amazon, Google and Facebook-owner Meta which are also facing antitrust lawsuits in the United States. News of the lawsuit sent shares in Apple down by as much as 3.75 percent on Wall Street yesterday. At the heart of the case is Apple’s alleged exclusionary practices that set strict and at times opaque conditions on firms and developers seeking to reach the iPhone’s 136 million US users.

According to the lawsuit, these rules and decisions have been designed to force Apple users into staying in the Apple ecosystem and buying the company’s more expensive hardware, the iPhone.