The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a case against Apple (AAPL) this morning for antitrust violations. The news caused the price of the company’s stock to drop. It was down almost 4% in the early afternoon. The move undid the gains made in the last two days, when Apple stock hit its best level since March 1. Even though Apple’s stock price has gone down, the Nasdaq is still up because of all the excitement around chipmakers.
The DOJ and 16 state attorneys general filed the case in a federal court in New Jersey. They say that the smartphone maker has a monopoly on the cell phone market. After his predecessor started an antitrust case against Apple in 2019, Biden’s administration took this step. In 2020, the House looked into tech companies and found that Apple was breaking the law by having a stronghold on software distribution.
People say that Apple makes it hard for people to move from the iPhone because of platform-specific messaging and limits on users’ ability to hold digital assets and accounts in third-party wallets. At the beginning of this year, the European Union (EU) fined Apple $2 billion for making it harder for alternative music services to work on the iPhone.
Apple Has Lost Several Times Against The DOJ
But Biden’s DOJ has had mixed success with its antitrust actions this year. In the long run, however, they have done better against Apple. In 2010, the DOJ made Apple settle a case. This stopped the company from going after workers at other tech companies. The DOJ won a hearing in 2013 where they said Apple worked with book publishers to raise prices. Based on what has happened in the past, Apple may find it hard to defend itself against these new claims.
