Microsoft at the time had a virtual OS monopoly (around 90% market share if I recall), and the court found that they were unlawfully leveraging an existing monopoly for advantage in a different market (web browsers). With less than 50% share, Apple does not have an OS monopoly, so the same logic does not apply.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of enacting laws to protect freedom on the web platform. But the Microsoft fact pattern just doesn't apply.
Apple gets away with it because they don't have a monopoly. There's a large variety of non-Apple smartphones and tablets you can buy.
Microsoft's behavior was restricted because they were a monopoly. There were alternatives to Windows, but the court decided that they were sufficiently insignificant that Windows was effectively a monopoly. That changes the rules.
Windows market share at the time was about 95%, Apple's smartphone market share is in the neighborhood of 15-20%.
The justification for the anti-trust actions against Microsoft was that it was abusing its power as a monopoly in operating systems to create a monopoly in web browsers. The same logic doesn't apply in this case because Apple doesn't have a monopoly in anything.
You've misremembered the Microsoft ruling. It wasn't about Microsoft having control over computers running Windows - that alone does not a monopoly make. What made Microsoft a monopoly was that over 95% (can't remember the exact number) of all computers were running Windows.
"The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers in its handling of operating system and web browser sales"
Thing is, Apple platforms aren't a monopoly at the eye of the law.
You are free to just use something else with bigger market share.
Microsoft went to court over that because they were leveraging their OS monopoly into a browser monopoly. Microsoft always let you install alternatives by the waybut IE was the default and most people don’t change defaults.
Apple is not a monopoly unless you’re just looking at mobile profits, which historically is not how a monopoly is defined (they’re not even a monopoly in the luxury smartphone market). Android is actually much closer to being a monopoly and does all sorts of deals to maintain their monopolies on search, browsers, and Android which would warrant investigation. Now maybe a monopoly should be defined as % of total profits in a market? Not sure. It would be breaking new regulatory ground for sure.
Also, from the sounds of it, Apple is going to be forced to allow third party browsers and app stores via EU regulation. It’s less clear exactly how that will work and whether that will be available to customers in other jurisdictions.
Microsoft didn't make money on their free Internet Explorer web browser but they lost an anti-trust case for giving it away free with Windows.
And before anyone says Apple isn't a monopoly...well they are in certain markets. For instance, among the younger generations they have like +80% market share and in the US they have close to 50%. There's also an anti-trust case pending against them in the Supreme Court right now.
Apple has a monopoly under many framings, now it comes down to wether a judge agrees or just kicks away Apple opponents.
How so? Google has 80-90% of the search engine market and Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market and used that disadvantage competitors in the nascent browser market.
The bottom line with Microsoft was: should Microsoft be allowed to use its monopoly position in operating systems to essentially force customers to take your web browser, whether they wanted it or not? It certainly wasn’t okay for Microsoft to use the threat of canceling HP’s ability to be a Windows’s OEM (and therefore destroying their PC business) if they made Netscape Navigator their default browser.
People forget how dominant Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were back in the MS-DOS days; Microsoft used Windows to make Word and Excel the dominant word processor and spreadsheet.
Apple’s worldwide market share is barely 30%; it’s closer to 50% in the U.S. It’s also not illegal to disallow 3rd party developers to “break” your platform, especially when they entered into a legal agreement with you to not break your platform.
There’s nothing illegal about controlling a successful platform and deciding who and what can be present on that platform. Game consoles have long operated the same way but that seems to be okay.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly position in either phones or computers; if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else. That wasn’t the case with Microsoft back in the day and it’s pretty much not the case today with web search, since it’s realistically not an option for a business to not be available on Google search or to ignore its advertising platform that reaches billions of users.
This would have been fine if Windows wasn't 95+% of desktop computer market share at the time. The regulatory argument was that Microsoft was abusing their desktop OS monopoly to give themselves an unfair advantage in another market (browsers).
By contrast iOS is ~50% of mobile OS market share (in the US, I think it's less elsewhere). Hardly a monopoly. If using a different mobile browser is important to you, there's a competing, popular mobile OS that can provide that.
But Microsoft did have a monopoly in the browser market at that time. Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in the browser market or the phone market or the app market. You can’t abuse a monopoly you don’t have.
Microsoft got hit for using their monopoly in one market (the market for operating systems) illegally to try to obtain better/monopoly status in another market (the market for web browsers.
If you have an evidence-based argument to make that Apple has a monopoly in the market for mobile operating systems and has illegally used it to try to obtain a monopoly in the market for web browsers, I would be intrigued to hear it.
(in other words, not every bundled web browser is automatically a violation of antitrust law; nor is every attempt to forbid something on iOS automatically a violation)
Those laws only apply to monopolies. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in any market segment, so they engage in quite a few anti-competitive behaviors that would be illegal if they were a monopoly. That's why Microsoft got in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows even though end users could install any browser they liked while Apple is free to require iOS users only use Mobile Safari or a browser UI running on top of Mobile Safari (Chrome, Firefox, etc on iOS).
They have Monopoly over the iPhone market, everyone was free to distribute programs for Windows but MS still got into deep trouble because of IE. In the eyes of the law you don't have to run 90 or 100% market share to be considered to be a monopoly.
Microsoft's share of the desktop market at the time was very close to unity. You couldn't vote with your feet because there was nowhere to go. Even now, MS have about 75% of the PC OS market.
Apple's share of the smartphone market is around 15% globally, and 55% within the US. Under no definition can Apple be said to be in the same position that Microsoft was. You can indeed vote with your feet and many do (in both directions).
Anti-trust law is designed to do two things. Prevent companies from becoming monopolies in a market, and break up companies that are monopolies. By the numbers, Apple is not a monopoly, and there are plenty of healthy alternatives to Apple. Anti-trust law is just fine and dandy and I support it. It just does not apply here.
Apple has 50%. Courts have already ruled they’re not a monopoly. Epic asked the Supreme Court to look at that again and they specifically decided not to and to leave the decision in place.
That’s why Apple can do what they’re (now, post order) doing legally and Microsoft couldn’t.
at the time Microsoft had > 90% market share of desktop PC operating systems. currently apple doesn't have even close to this market share for mobile handset/tablet operating systems.
remember, the anti-trust laws are meant to curtail abuses of monopolies. they are almost powerless when a company is not actually a monopoly. that's by design. when a company is not a monopoly the remedy to their abuses is to simply buy from their competitor.
I suspect parent poster's use of the word monopoly is slightly off here, but they do have somewhat of a point. It's not the wideness of Apple's market share that is in question, it is the depth of the control. Apps can literally go extinct overnight seemingly on a whim (we don't like this type of tech for reason X, or that type for reason Y, etc). The IE situation was an abuse of MS's dominant market position, but the cost of developing a browser and distributing it for free was high enough that MS had to cherry pick one or two areas to bulldozer into. Apple's cost of doing the same is nil, as they don't have to compete, they can just disallow access entirely.
going from the actual ruling against microsoft, that ruling was microsoft had a monopoly on Intel base computers and not computers in general. Apple has an even larger monopoly on A9, A10, A11 based computers. in fact they have 100% monopoly for those computers
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of enacting laws to protect freedom on the web platform. But the Microsoft fact pattern just doesn't apply.
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