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The 88-page suit was filed on Thursday in a New Jersey federal court with 16 state and district attorneys general joining the Department of Justice.
At issue is Apple’s most popular product, the
Instead of competing with rivals offering more affordable services, federal and state authorities allege that Apple imposed “a series of shapeshifting rules and restrictions” to “extract higher fees, thwart innovation, offer a less secure or degraded user experience, and throttle competitive alternatives.”
“Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”
Notably, the suit marks the most ambitious antitrust effort the Biden administration so far, which has promised to roll back corporate consolidation in sectors such as technology that critics say have made it all but impossible for smaller rivals to compete, as reported Al Jazeera.
The Biden administration’s antitrust push has already taken aim at corporate behemoths such as Google and Amazon, alongside unsuccessful bids to block acquisition deals Microsoft and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.
Meanwhile, Apple has disputed that characterization and said that it would “vigorously” defend itself against the suit, which it called “wrong on the facts and the law”.
The California-based company has faced growing scrutiny from anti-monopoly enforcement bodies in Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Apple, a company with annual revenues of about USD 400 billion, has long promoted the strict integration between its products and software, an approach sometimes referred to as a “walled garden”.
The company argues that this helps give users a more seamless experience, but the DOJ said on Thursday that the corporation has achieved its gargantuan status in part flouting antitrust laws.
“For years, Apple responded to competitive threats imposing a series of ‘Whac-A-Mole’ contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said in a press release.
“Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Apple accountable and ensure it cannot deploy the same, unlawful playbook in other vital markets,” he added.
Following the development, Apple’s stock price fell little over 3 per cent, Al Jazeera reported. (ANI)