Apple’s pattern of anticompetitive behavior extends to its treatment of Blix and similarly situated competitors in the iOS App Store, and far beyond cross-platform messaging.
Since shortly after the iPhone’s inception, Apple recognized that it needed to permit at least the image of choice in the apps consumers may use on their smartphones; otherwise, users would opt for more open mobile platforms. Apple recognized this by introducing the iOS App Store about a year after releasing the iPhone. But since creating the App Store, Apple has limited actual choice and used its dominance over the store to advance its own financial interests at the expense of fair competition.
In that process, Blix and a multitude of other app developers were denied a fair opportunity to provide innovative iOS software and win substantial market share. Likewise, consumers were (and continue to be) denied a fair opportunity to discover and use innovative software like BlueMail, and instead were (and continue to be) steered into using Apple’s default apps.
Apple has foreclosed competition, and harmed the developers who would otherwise compete fairly for consumer loyalty, through a variety of means. One is its stranglehold on iOS app distribution and its decisions about which apps it admits to or denies from the iOS App Store. Apple refuses to let other iOS distribution channels operate; every iOS developer must submit to Apple’s App Store, and so to Apple’s requirements and control.
For the apps Apple does permit, it still forecloses fair competition by manipulating what the App Store shows when a consumer searches for an app. Apple suppresses search results for competing products, promotes its own apps, and makes it difficult for users to find and install quality replacements for Apple’s default apps.
Apple also raises its rivals’ costs. Its rules expose rivals, but not Apple, to user ratings and negative feedback. Managing feedback and responding to reviews is costly; Apple imposes those costs on its rivals while exempting its own apps from the rating system. Apple likewise raises rivals’ costs when it takes competitors’ ideas without permission, by studying features in apps submitted for distribution through the App Store. Once that is done, Apple frequently either forces those apps off the App Store or makes them undiscoverable or unattractive to interested consumers.
Users should have access to the best software, selected through fair competition on the merits. That process drives innovation, ensures fair pricing, and increases demand for cutting-edge technology. Apple harms that process by using its ownership of the App Stores to continuously tilt the playing field in its own favor.