The Department of Justice has picked New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin to lead a group of fifteen state attorneys general in a mega antitrust lawsuit alleging that Apple has monopoly power over the smartphone market by systemically blocking third-party mobile software on its devices and keeping customers from switching to other operating systems.
The lawsuit was filed in New Jersey and assigned to the U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz.
“Apple’s dominance in the smartphone market is not an accident,” Platkin said. “Instead, Apple has gone to great lengths to create a monopoly that affected not only the smartphone industry, but also the choice of apps, payment systems, smartwatches, and more. The end result is you pay more for an inferior product — all while Apple collects billions in profits. With today’s lawsuit, we are standing up for consumers across the country and putting a stop to this monopolistic behavior.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Apple of using “a strategy that relies on exclusionary, anticompetitive conduct that hurts both consumers and developers.”
“For consumers, that has meant fewer choices; higher prices and fees; lower quality smartphones, apps, and accessories; and less innovation from Apple and its competitors,” he said. “For developers, that has meant being forced to play by rules that insulate Apple from competition.”
According to Garland, Apple’s share of the U.S. smartphone market is over 65%.
In a statement this morning, the New Jersey attorney general’s office claimed that Apple blocks super apps and cloud streaming apps from their app store because they don’t rely on the company’s operating system to function.
Among the allegations: developers must agree to pay 30% of the price of an app, product or service to apple, and then Apple takes an additional 30% from the consumer purchase.