The American Justice Department and 16 other state attorneys have just launched a new lawsuit against iPhone maker Apple. They claim the tech giant has been in continuous violation of the state’s antitrust laws.

The company is certainly one of the biggest and most valuable firms in the world and to see it get accusations of that kind hurled in its direction is shocking.

To be more specific, the Justice Department says Apple is misusing its leading dominance in the tech world and playing like a monopoly that gives an unfair advantage to all others working by its side.

The Department of Justice joined several other leading states including Arizona, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and The District of Columbia among others to outline the types of technology that Apple has been using for years to create the right smartphone monopoly across its home nation.

For starters, super apps were delineated where Apple limited their creation and stopped users from getting access to a broad array of functionalities through a single platform. This would reduce people’s incentive to switch from Apple to non-Apple devices.

Other than that, it was restricting cloud streaming platforms which stop users from playing all kinds of high-computing games. This is unless and until they get processed across costly hardware. This reinforced dependence across iPhones.

Meanwhile, messaging apps were also presented with better quality on iOS devices when compared to the regular functioning of iMessage by Apple. This would again prevent users from making the switch to texting apps owned by third parties.

Let’s not forget digital wallets across iPhone devices where Apple denied users from getting access to a host of products inside its competitive ecosystem to ensure no harm gets done.

The Department of Justice still needs to further validate its case before forcing the iPhone maker into making changes that impact its current business. However, such lawsuits are designed to force Apple to enable consumers to make installations of such alternative means of tech across iPhone devices.

This would allow a much greater level of customization to take place, not to mention personalization. It would also lower prices potentially from those belonging to third parties to those seen on the App Store.

Whatever the case may be, one thing is for sure. The Department of Justice wants the world to know that there’s a huge amount of criticism against Apple’s actions and it’s now no longer going to go unnoticed.

Let’s not forget how Apple’s very stringent mobile operations system and App Store have been making the most of profit shares that others must give from any in-app sales.

For years, Epic Games has been making the world come to attention about how it’s no longer going to accept Apple’s behavior and therefore rolled out a lawsuit in Apple’s direction over its refusal to enable Epic Games to get funds from consumers within the Fortnite mobile game across iOS. This is right outside the fees generated by Apple’s App Store.

Epic Games won a huge relief across the EU when it was declared successful with its claims of giving tech providers the chance to make the most of marketplaces owned by third parties across these devices.

So now that the DOJ in the US has opted to spring into action to free the smartphone market from such acts that Apple is pursuing, we can see how aims to have competition get back on track are in place.

But Apple is fighting back. It claims that the goal of this legal case is to fight and ensure the iPhone turns into Android which it has no plans on achieving.

A rep from the Cupertino firm mentioned boldly how the DOJ legal case is directed to make iPhones appear as identical to the functioning of the Android and its related operations. And such acts would really hurt competition.

Some of the argument stems from the fact that the goal is to give devices a host of qualities that are very much in line with Android but the iPhone maker says it would restrict customer choices by doing so.

Some of the benefits of iPhones have to do with the fact that it’s so secure and private. Also, it would be required to produce the right kind of compromise to things in cases when the Department of Justice becomes victorious.

For now, the lawsuit is certainly a big one as the American legal system is involved and we can see how the main target here is the iPhone in each respect. This entails iMessages, CarPlay, and even FaceTime amongst others. What do you think?

Image: DIW-Aigen

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