Apple’s Tight Grip on iMessage Spurs Fresh Calls for an Antitrust Probe
The US Department of Justice has received mail: A coalition of greater than a dozen tech advocacy teams wrote to the company as we speak calling on it to launch an investigation into allegedly anticompetitive conduct by Apple.
The letter says that Apple’s latest blocking of Beeper, which reverse engineered iMessage to permit compatibility with Android telephones, is one other instance of Apple “abusing its power to stifle competition and protect its famed ‘walled garden.’” It was despatched by the Tech Oversight Project, which campaigns for more durable tech regulation.
A second letter was despatched to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday by Demand Progress, which works on internet-related civil liberties, asking it to launch its personal Apple probe. More than a dozen different progressive advocacy teams cosigned the 2 letters, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Fight for the Future.
The Department of Justice has been reported to be investigating Apple over antitrust issues since a minimum of 2020. Tech Oversight Project’s letter to the DOJ urged it to speed up that work and file an antitrust go well with in opposition to Apple, pointing to what it referred to as a “long, ongoing history of anticompetitive behavior, including favoring its own products on its devices, unfair policies for third-party apps and control of the App Store marketplace, and using its dominance to crush smaller competitors.” Bloomberg reported earlier in December that an EU antitrust investigation might make an enforcement resolution in opposition to Apple over its management of the app retailer in early 2024.
The letter to the DOJ additionally cited the latest shutdown of Beeper Mini and prior complaints by Tile, maker of a monitoring system, that its product’s performance was affected by Apple when the iPhone maker launched its personal AirTag trackers.
In its personal letter, Demand Progress, which claims greater than one million members, appealed to Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Amy Klobuchar, chair of that group’s subcommittee on antitrust, to name for a public listening to and investigation into Apple’s practices, together with its technique of preserving iMessage unique to its personal gadgets.
“Apple is attempting to squash efforts to streamline messaging between Apple and Android devices,” the letter reads. It cites accusations that by making messages from folks with out iPhones seem in inexperienced bubbles, Apple exploits peer stress, particularly on youngsters, to advance its personal pursuits. The firm didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Pile On
The Apple-Beeper episode has triggered new stress on Apple to loosen its tight management of its providers. On December 17, 4 US senators wrote to the assistant legal professional normal of the DOJ’s antitrust division, Jonathan Kanter, calling for the division to analyze whether or not Apple probably violated antitrust legal guidelines when it lower off a few of Beeper’s performance between Android messages and iMessage.
Beeper, a three-year-old Silicon Valley startup, launched its Beeper Mini app on December 5 to bridge the hole between SMS messaging on Android telephones and Apple’s iMessage protocol on iPhones. The app runs on Android telephones and initially price $2 per thirty days however is now supplied without spending a dime.
