Apple fights consumer claim that it has a monopoly over iPhone apps
Apple, which never seems to be far from a courtroom these days, is fighting a claim by seven consumers that it has a monopoly over iPhone apps.
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Yesterday the company asked a federal judge in Oakland, California to dismiss the case, Bloomberg reports.
Lawyers who filed the suit in 2011 say a monopoly exists - because an iPhone user who doesn’t want to pay what developers charge for apps in Apple’s App Store can’t buy them anywhere else .
iPhone software developers must turn over to Apple 30 percent of what they charge for an application, increasing prices and excluding competitors from the iPhone “aftermarket” of applications, claim the consumers' attorneys.
For Apple, lawyer Dan Wall said the company doesn’t set the price for applications - and charging a price for distribution of a product on a new and unique platform doesn’t violate any antitrust laws.
“There’s nothing illegal about creating a system that is closed in a sense,” he told Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers .
Alexander Schmidt, for the consumers , asked, “Can a consumer go somewhere else to buy Angry Birds for the iPhone?If the answer is no, then Apple is a monopolist.”
Judge Rogers didn’t say when she would rule .