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The iCuffs are Coming? 👮♂️
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The iCuffs are Coming? 👮♂️
Apple gets served …. and it’s not pie. The DOJ has dished up a landmark antitrust lawsuit taking on the Apple ecosystem.
The lawsuit states that Apple has illegally sustained an iPhone monopoly by giving its own devices and services an advantage over rivals.
Feature, Not A Bug
For Apple, the stickiness of its products is an intended feature derived from carefully designed overlapping product ecosystems - your iPhone, iPad, Watch and the Mac are all seamlessly interconnected.
From blue text messages to a synchronized collection of your photos taken across devices, Apple’s technology often aims to make third-party services unnecessary, leading to a walled garden.
Don’t forget Green Bubble Shaming.
But now, it seems like their gated garden is starting to crack:
Record scratch: This month EU regulators ordered Apple to pay a $2B fine, saying the company suppressed music-streaming competition.
Game on: Apple started allowing outside payment systems on the US App Store this year after a lawsuit with Epic Games.
The DOJ vs The Incumbents
At this point, antitrust cases have become almost like a badge of honor to these mega-cap tech companies. This is round Four for the DoJ against Big Tech after filing suits against Amazon, Alphabet and Meta over the past few years.
According to the complaint, Apple engaged in anti-competitive behavior in at least 5 areas:
Blocking Super Apps.
Suppressing Cloud Gaming.
Excluding cross-platform messaging apps.
Diminishing the functionality of non-Apple smart watches
Limiting third-party digital wallets.
What’s next: If the DOJ wins, the government hasn’t ruled out breaking up Apple, similar to how, in the past, firms were pressured to split up into different companies (AT&T) or make their products more compatible with competitors (Microsoft).
☄️ Asteroids ☄️
Alphabet eyes HubSpot in a potential tech behemoth union, flirting with a $33 billion deal that could transform Google's CRM game. 💼🔍
TikTok flexes economic muscle amid ban buzz, spotlighting $24.2B boon for US small biz. The ByteDance jewel supports 224K jobs, as it campaigns to stay. 📈🚫
The Disney Plus password-sharing crackdown starts in June. CEO Bob Iger plans on rolling out paid sharing in ‘a few countries’ to start. 🔒️🔑
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