Some considerable time ago, I called Apple a Monopoly, and doubtelss suggested
that they were every bit as bad as M$, here on Groklaw. PJ, always striving
for accuracy, rightly pointed out the error of my assumptions, because in the
legal sense they were, and probably still are, not a monopoly. The problem is
that a monopoly exists when someone owns most of a given market, and Apple have
never owned a majority of the market for either computers or phones. The law, as
of now, would seem to only look at the overall market for vaguely similar
products. I happen to think that is wrong, but that is how the law stands as of
now. If the market was defined as computers which can run apps intended for OSX,
they have 100% market share, and have achieved and maintained that monopoly by
restrictive practices. If anti-trust law ever does take a more fine-grained
look at the meaning of markets, it will be clear that Apple are indeed a worse
monopoly than M$. But I doubt that such a thing will happen any time
soon. On the other hand, with some considerations such as legal requirements
for interoperability in certain places, notably the EU, it could be a logical
step to look at why an OS is only available on a single manufacturers hardware,
and do something about it. If it was decided that the market really was limited
to platforms which can run apps written for OSX, Apple's behaviour would
probably amount to illegal tying, at the very least. All it might take is for
legislators somewhere to realise that an Apple computer and a PC are really
totally different markets. Same for phones, Android is a very competitive
market, which is good, but Apple is closed. If the market was legally the iPhone
market, they would be in deep legal trouble. It all depends on how the law, in
the forseeable future, is going to view markets. For instance, in the car
industry there is massive competition, but just suppose that one, and only one,
manufacturer was making cars running on some new and very "green" type of fuel,
and refused to licence their technology to anyone else. Would, or should, the
law not regard the market as consisting only of green cars, not gas-guzzlers
too, and would there not then be the possibility of an illegal monopoly? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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