Apple is asking a federal court to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 16 state attorneys general against the company for maintaining an illegal monopoly on the smartphone market.
The tech giant argued in a filing on Thursday that it is not a monopoly and that its design choices do not have any anticompetitive effects on the market.
“Apple has invested billions of dollars to develop innovative, cutting-edge products and differentiate iPhone in the highly competitive smartphone market through consumer-oriented features,” the filing said.
“This lawsuit is based on the false premise that the success of the iPhone was due not to Apple developing a superior product that consumers trusted and loved, but rather to Apple intentionally compromising the quality of the iPhone in order to thwart a competitive threat,” the lawsuit continues.
The Justice Department sued Apple in March, accusing the company of maintaining a monopoly on the smartphone market by undermining apps, products and services that would reduce users’ reliance on their iPhones and increase interoperability.
The agency alleges that the iPhone maker has “imposed a series of shape-shifting rules and restrictions on App Store guidelines and developer agreements” that stifle competition by “charging higher fees, stifling innovation, delivering less secure or lower quality user experiences, and stifling competitive choice.”
The company points to Apple’s treatment of super apps, cloud streaming services, cross-platform messaging, non-Apple smartwatches and third-party digital wallets.
But the tech giant insisted on Thursday that it would not stop customers from switching to rivals such as Google or Samsung.
“Users who are dissatisfied with Apple’s reasonable third-party access policies can and do switch to competitors’ devices that lack such restrictions,” Apple wrote in the filing. “This disconnect between allegedly exclusionary conduct and the lack of harm in the smartphone market is fatal to the Government’s theory and must be rejected.”
