In everything it does, from product design to business deals, Apple (AAPL) strives for as much control as possible.
But as the world’s most valuable company sets out to define and dominate the rapidly evolving markets it created with the iPhone and the iPad, Apple is likely to face antitrust regulators who want to curb its power.
Apple’s clout is coming under scrutiny as the U.S. Justice Department considers filing a lawsuit against the company and five U.S. publishers on allegations they orchestrated a price-fixing scheme on electronic books.
The involved parties are trying to avoid a high-profile court battle by negotiating a settlement, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper broke the news last week about the government’s plans to allege that Apple and the publishers tried to thwart e-book discounts offered by Amazon.com and drive up prices since the 2010 release of the iPad.
“I think this might be a bit of a wake-up call for Apple,” says Ted Henneberry, an antitrust attorney for the Orrick law firm in Washington.
Apple declined to comment.
The e-book case demonstrates the market leverage Apple has gained from its system of Internet-connected devices that tie into iTunes, its digital marketplace for mobile applications, books, newspapers, magazines, textbooks, movies and music.
“That platform has become really essential for a lot of people,” says David Balto, an antitrust attorney who was a Federal Trade Commission policy director during the Clinton administration. “Apple clearly has gained a lot of power in a number of markets.”
Apple has sold more than 315 million iPhones, iPads and iPods that run on its mobile operating system, giving it the keys to a market that will become increasingly influential as more people buy digital content for such devices.
Apple’s success has transformed the company from a technology boutique to a trendsetting juggernaut in the past decade. Its annual revenue has soared from $5 billion in 2001 to $108 billion last year. About three-quarters of that revenue comes from sales of iPhones, iPads and iPods. The Cupertino company has a market value of about $510 billion — more than Microsoft and Google combined.
So far, though, government regulators haven’t paid as much attention to Apple as they did to Microsoft during the 1990s and to Google (GOOG) in the past four years.
Microsoft’s efforts to maintain and increase its dominance of personal computer software provoked an antitrust lawsuit that unsuccessfully attempted to break up the company.
Allegations that Google has been abusing its dominance of the Internet search and advertising markets have sparked wide-ranging government probes into the company’s business practices in the U.S. and Europe.
Apple may simply behave better than some of its rivals, or it may be doing business in areas that are so new that government regulators are still learning how those nascent markets function, says D. Daniel Sokol, a law professor who focuses on antitrust issues at the University of Florida.
