The U.S. government sued Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market, and some of the accusations were considered ridiculous

According to news on March 22, the U.S. Department of Justice and 16 state and territory attorneys general recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming that Apple has a monopoly on the smartphone market and has set up obstacles to prevent other companies from entering. However, some of the allegations in the lawsuit have been questioned by industry insiders as lacking basis.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman pointed out the absurdity of some of the accusations. For example, the lawsuit blames the failure of Amazon's Fire Phone on Apple's monopolistic behavior. Amazon launched the Fire Phone in 2014 but "withdrew from the market the following year because it was unprofitable," the filing said. Industry insiders believe that the failure of Fire Phone was caused by its own reasons. First of all, the Fire Phone uses a customized version of Android and does not have the Google Play Store installed, which is enough to dissuade a large number of consumers. It is reported that the total sales volume of Fire Phone is only 26,000 units. When it was first launched, Fire Phone signed an exclusive sales agreement with operator AT&T. The price was US$200 (contract price). Later, the price was reduced to US$99 (with two-year contract). The exclusive sales agreement was Sales also limit the number of potential users for the Fire Phone. Industry insiders believe that the failure of Fire Phone has nothing to do with Apple, and Amazon’s withdrawal from the mobile phone market is not caused by Apple. Noted that in addition to Fire Phone, the U.S. Department of Justice also blamed Apple for the failure of Microsoft Windows Phone, believing that Apple’s monopoly caused developers to not develop applications for its platform. But industry insiders pointed out that the real reason for Windows Phone's failure was Microsoft's inability to attract developers to provide rich app store content for its system. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice also claimed that HTC and LG’s withdrawal from the smartphone market was also related to Apple, while ignoring Samsung’s dominance in the high-end Android mobile phone market as the key factor. In short, the U.S. Department of Justice and the relevant attorneys general should probably re-examine the reasonableness of their accusations. The failure of the Fire Phone should be blamed on Amazon itself. The lack of app store content for Windows Phone was its fatal flaw. Samsung’s strength in the high-end market was the key factor that caused HTC and LG to exit the market.

The above is the detailed content of The U.S. government sued Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market, and some of the accusations were considered ridiculous. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!