Apple's antitrust suit of 2020

March 15, 2020

Washington, D.C.

Supreme Court of the United States of America

(A fictional transcript)

Assistant Attorney General for the United States:

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, we are here to argue that Apple Incorporated is, in fact, a monopoly that stifles its competitors through predatory practices that inhibit the markets in which it does business. Like Standard Oil of New Jersey v. the United States in 1911 or, more recently, in the appellate decisions of the United States v. Microsoft Corporation in 2002, the courts have consistently held that a business entity that seeks to control markets through its domination in other markets is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. We hold that to be the case in the United States v. Apple Incorporated in the year 2020. Although other antitrust litigation against the company failed in years gone by, for example, Somers et. al. v. Apple, that was because those cases argued against Apple's dominance within a single market. That is not the government's position in 2020.

If the court will bear with me, let me offer some context. Back in the early years of this century Apple Incorporated used its domination of the online music distribution market through its iTunes software combined with its iPod mobile listening devices to first price other music distribution methods out of business and then segue into the mobile smart phone telecommunications market. Soon its iPhone cell phone was the single most popular handheld mobile device on the market. It then used its market-dominate iPhone platform to lure the majority of independent software vendors, or ISVs, to create new and innovative applications for the device using a proprietary software development kit, or SDK. Apple then used its dominant iTunes-style software distribution technology to assure that ISV software would be the most popular way to get software onto those iPhone devices. Further, with its proprietary SDK it was able to convince ISVs to extend their iPhone applications to run on Apple's OS X operating system platform to the exclusion of applications developed using competitive SDKs.

With the convergence of mobile and desktop computing, Apple was able to use its domination in mobile software to become the monopoly it is today in desktop software, putting companies like the plaintiffs Microsoft Corporation and Adobe Systems Incorporated among others at an unfair competitive disadvantage. The actions of Apple Computer violate the Sherman Antitrust Act, specifically clauses relating to the regulating of vertical market monopolies.

We ask the court to order Apple Incorporated to divest itself of its hardware businesses and explicitly separate its operating system business from its application software business. It is only through such actions that the court can keep free-market capitalism vibrant and sustainable in the United States' computer and software industry. The very fabric of business is at stake with this court's decision.