An Apple Case Against Interoperability: A US Attorney General Appeals to the Apple CEO for Using the App Store to Prevent Smartphone Customers From Switching

The US Department of Justice, along with more than a dozen state attorneys general, has filed a lawsuit against Apple that takes direct aim at the iPhone and the company’s lucrative iOS ecosystem.

Apple’s App Store has been a particular point of contention for years. The company has faced legal challenges, most notably from Fortnite developer Epic Games, over both its restrictiveness and the fees it charges developers for in-app purchases. The App Store is a focal point of the suit, a key component of the allegedly anticompetitive “moat” the company has built around its products.

The Biden administration has a strong focus on antitrust enforcement. The executive order issued by the White House was meant to encourage stronger enforcement of antitrust laws, and was followed by a White House Competition Council. According to a survey, the public is concerned that the government should do more to stop monopolies from dominating the economy.

“Over the last two decades Apple has become one of the most successful companies in the world,” US attorney general Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday morning, noting that the company is bigger than the individual GDP of more than 100 countries. Garland accuses Apple of degrading quality and security to stifle innovation in order to retain its grip on the market.

The DOJ says surveys have found that the devices that are linked to the iPhone deter them from abandoning their choice of operating system.

The Apple Watch didn’t turn into a blockbuster like the iPhone, but the DOJ suit quotes an executive’s email to allege that the company used the device to exert leverage on its smartphone customers. In 2019, the suit alleges, Apple’s vice president of product marketing for Apple Watch wrote that the device “may help prevent iPhone customers from switching.”

Since the beginning of the year some users have grown frustrated about Apple controlling their messages and keeping them inside of the green bubble. Apple said last year that it was going to add compatibility with the RCS standard to the iMessage platform. Apple has also long argued that iMessage’s security features are a bar to interoperability, another point of contention with the DOJ.

One 2013 message quoted, from Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, is claimed to have warned that allowing Apple Messages to work across platforms “would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”

A DOJ lawsuit alleges that Apple is trying to deter competition by charging developers to use its payment system to lock in users and developers on its platform

The DOJ alleges that the episode demonstrates an early instance of Apple using a playbook it has turned to repeatedly when facing competition, intentionally locking users and developers into Apple’s ecosystem. The lawsuit contends that apple alternatives have become more expensive than they are worth in order to deter competition.

The ad is depicted in the suit as triggering concern inside Apple. It says that the executive wrote to Jobs that it was easy to switch from the Apple phone to the one made for phones with the Android operating system. Not interesting to watch. The suit does not say that Jobs wrote anything about Apple forcing developers to use its payment system to lock in both users and developers on its platform.

The DOJ claims to have an email exchange in 2010 between Steve Jobs and an unnamed top Apple executive. A woman who bought a book on the iBookstore using a device like an iPad, and later used a phone to read it, is the subject of an email sent to Jobs by an executive.