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Apple's iPhone: US justice wants to prevent the company from further expanding its "smartphone monopoly".

Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

After Google and Meta, another large tech company is now being hit: The US Federal Prosecutor's Office has brought a far-reaching charge against Apple: It's about the alleged illegal monopoly formation of the iPhone. Accordingly, the group denied competitors access to the hardware and software functions of its devices and preferred its own offerings. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is also the country's top prosecutor, filed the lawsuit in federal court in New Jersey. His ministry announced this on Thursday.

The indictment accuses Apple of suppressing competition and charging consumers excessive prices. If no action is taken against the company, "Apple will only continue to expand its smartphone monopoly," explained Garland.

The lawsuit is the latest example of the Justice Department's aggressive approach to enforcing federal antitrust law. According to officials, the approach is aimed at ensuring a fair and competitive market. However, some important competition cases have already been lost.

Apple rejects allegations as factually incorrect

Apple, meanwhile, has called the lawsuit “false as to the facts and the law” and has denied the allegations. We will vigorously defend ourselves against it. The company emphasized that the lawsuit threatens principles that make Apple products outstanding in a highly competitive market. It is also a dangerous precedent in which the government wants to dictate how technology should be developed.

The core of the allegations is that Apple made its own devices more attractive by making other companies' services artificially less attractive. Among other things, the lawsuit states that Apple is hindering so-called “super apps” that can serve as a platform for various services. In addition, the group has put obstacles in the way of competing chat services and games that run on servers on the Internet. Changes to Apple's business that the US government might force will not necessarily affect users in Europe.

Apple has just had to restructure its EU business in some fundamental ways because of the new DMA digital law. For the first time, the company allowed apps to be loaded onto iPhones from places other than the in-house app store. However, some large app providers such as the music streaming market leader Spotify and the "Fortnite" company Epic Games criticize that Apple has made the conditions so unfavorable for developers that the vast majority of them would not accept it. Apple emphasizes that downloading apps from other sources involves risks for users that must be protected.

The EU Commission recently imposed a fine of 1.84 billion euros after a complaint from Spotify because Apple had hindered competition in music streaming. Of these, 1.8 billion were intended for “deterrence,” it was said.

The US government is targeting the next big tech company with competition allegations: the Justice Department has already sued Google, and the FTC is taking action against Amazon and the Facebook group Meta. For a long time, companies benefited from rather lax regulation in their home market, but that has changed in recent years. The proceedings in these cases usually take years.

eru/AFP/Reuters/dpa