The Impact of Apple's Monopoly on Smartphone Users and the Competitive Landscape

A. Apple’s conduct harms the competitive process

126. As described above, Apple protects its monopoly power in smartphones and performance smartphones by using its control over app distribution and app creation to suppress or delay apps, innovations, and technologies that would reduce user switching costs or simply allow users to discover, purchase, and use their own apps and content without having to rely on Apple. As a result, Apple faces less competition from rival smartphones and less competitive pressure from innovative, cross-platform technologies not because Apple makes its own products better but because it makes other products worse. With the benefit of less competition, Apple extracts extraordinary profits and regulates innovation to serve its interests. This leaves all smartphone users worse off, with fewer choices, higher prices and fees, lower quality smartphones, apps, and accessories, and less innovation from Apple and others. Left unchallenged, Apple will continue to use and strengthen its smartphone monopoly to dictate how companies can create and distribute apps in the future so that they cannot threaten Apple’s smartphone monopolies.

127. Apple’s conduct has resulted in less choice for smartphone users. Today, only two companies (Google and Samsung) remain as meaningful competitors to Apple in the premium smartphone market.

128. Even when users consider these alternatives, Apple’s conduct has increased the technical, behavioral, monetary, and other costs of switching from an iPhone to an alternative smartphone. This undermines competition and entrenches Apple’s monopoly power. For example, according to user surveys, one of the biggest reasons iPhone users do not switch to rival smartphones today is to avoid the problems Apple has created for cross-platform messaging. Likewise, Apple exercised its control over app distribution and app creation to impede the development and growth of super apps, depriving users of technology that would have facilitated switching by decreasing user’s dependence on Apple and the iPhone. Apple took a similar approach to cloud streaming apps, delaying or suppressing technology that would have made it easier for users to switch to cheaper smartphones. Apple also used its control over app creation, including its control over critical APIs, to impose technical and contractual restrictions on messaging apps, third-party smartwatches, and digital wallets, undermining cross-platform technologies that would have helped users overcome switching costs and friction and ultimately increased smartphone competition.

129. Apple’s conduct has delayed or suppressed the emergence of cross-platform technologies that would put competitive pressure on Apple’s ability to extract extraordinary profits from users and developers. For example, if developers could distribute their programs through super apps or cloud streaming apps, rather than the App Store, it would put competitive pressure on Apple’s ability to control app distribution and app creation as well as the taxes Apple imposes on developers who want to distribute apps to iPhone users. Similarly, third-party digital wallets, or other apps with tap-to-pay functionality, would benefit users and developers by putting more competitive pressure on Apple as well. For example, digital wallets could eventually provide developers an alternative way to process payments and manage customer relationships, forcing Apple to compete more aggressively by lowering fees and improving quality, which would ultimately benefit users. Instead, Apple continues to exert its power over customers and financial institutions when users pay for something with their phone—in the App Store, in an app, or increasingly in the physical world with tap-to-pay.

130. Apple’s conduct has harmed users in other ways. For example, third-party digital wallets would reduce Apple’s ability to charge banks high fees when users make payments using Apple Wallet, which ultimately cost consumers through higher prices or other reductions in quality. Alternative digital wallets could also provide smartphone users better rewards, e.g., cash back, as well as a more private, secure payment experience from a user’s preferred financial institution rather than being forced to go through Apple. But these tap-to-pay digital wallet products and services do not exist today because of Apple.

131. Apple’s conduct has made its own products worse, sacrificing the short-term profits Apple could earn from improving the iPhone in order to preserve the long-term value of maintaining its monopoly. In a competitive market, Apple would compete aggressively to support the development of popular apps and accessories for iPhone users, which would in turn make iPhones more attractive to users and more valuable. But Apple takes steps to delay or suppress cross-platform technologies that it recognizes would be popular with users, such as super apps and cloud streaming apps, because of the threat they pose to Apple’s smartphone monopolies. As a result, several developers have abandoned plans to develop super apps and cloud-based gaming apps even after making substantial investments in bringing them to market. Apple’s conduct may have also slowed the development of innovative, high-compute apps related to education, artificial intelligence, and productivity as well. Apple has also impeded innovation by third-party smartwatches such that manufacturers have limited the functionality of their smartwatches for iPhone users, suspended support for iPhone compatibility because of Apple’s restrictions, or canceled development of cross-platform smartwatches altogether. At least one company’s canceled smartwatch formed part of its overall wearables strategy, including future development of virtual-reality technology. Similarly, Apple degrades third-party messaging apps, even though it makes cross-platform messaging less private and less secure for iPhone users, because doing so raises switching costs.

132. Apple’s conduct has harmed other smartphone users, too. Because of the resources and risks required to maintain different features across different smartphones, many potential super app, mini program, and other developers do not implement features prohibited by Apple even on other smartphones. For example, prospective digital wallet providers, including U.S. banks, have abandoned the development of digital-wallet apps for either Apple or other smartphones. Another company decided not to offer users an innovative digital car key in part because Apple required that company to add any features related to the key into Apple Wallet rather than allowing that company to put its key solely in its own app. Other developers have shrunk, shuttered, or abandoned plans to launch super apps, cloud-streamed gaming apps, smartwatches, and other apps. As a result, all smartphone users enjoy lower quality smartphones, less innovation, and less choice.

133. Apple’s documents and conduct show that Apple is motivated by the anticompetitive purpose of building or maintaining monopoly power in the relevant markets. For example, Apple sacrificed substantial revenues it could have earned from super apps, mini programs, cloud streaming apps, and other third-party apps and accessories. In particular, mobile gaming already accounts for a large and growing portion of Apple’s revenue. Popular cloud streamed gaming apps would offer iPhone users access to popular services (including games) and in turn generate significant revenue for Apple through subscriptions and in-app purchases. Instead, Apple preferred the long-term benefit of reduced smartphone competition to the revenue it would generate from cloud gaming, super apps, and mini programs or the quality (and consumer demand) increase that would flow from this innovation. Apple has also used its control over app distribution and app creation to selectively undermine cross-platform technologies, not because this helps protect users but because it helps protect Apple.

134. The harms to smartphone competition caused by Apple’s conduct are amplified by Apple’s decision to grant itself exclusive distribution rights to iPhone users through the Apple App Store. If Apple allowed users to access apps in other ways, users could choose an app store that did not restrict super apps or mini programs, even if Apple ran its App Store the same way it does today. Apple does not allow that choice, however, because if it did developers could write their programs for any smartphone rather than specifically for iOS, just as internet browsers and Apple’s QuickTime allowed developers to write programs that worked on a variety of operating systems not just Windows. That would lower users’ switching costs and reduce users’ and developers’ dependence on Apple and the iPhone.

135. Apple’s smartphone monopoly gives it many levers to maintain its power even in the face of interventions focused on eliminating or disciplining specific anticompetitive practices. This is because Apple’s iPhone monopoly, secured by its anticompetitive conduct, grants it the power to set the rules by which most smartphone users buy digital and hardware products, and by which developers are allowed to sell these same products to users. If Apple is forced to change some of these rules, it has the power to adopt new rules, restrictions, or features that reinforce Apple’s monopoly and harm competition in other ways. For example, Apple has stated plans to adopt RCS due to market and international regulatory pressure. But Apple continues to contractually restrict third parties from accessing other APIs and features that would enable cross-platform messaging apps. In another instance, Apple was enjoined from enforcing certain anti-steering provisions in its agreements with developers. In response, Apple simply created a different set of onerous restrictions on app developers to achieve a similar result. In other cases, Apple has used its control over app distribution to force companies to comply with Apple’s policies that may contradict local laws by delaying the review of the offending companies’ apps.