Microsoft had a monopoly on the desktop OS market, and so pushing IE was anti-competitive. Apple isn’t anywhere near having a monopoly in phones, in the US or anywhere else.

It’s not just the behavior that’s against the law, it’s the behavior plus the market position.

Plus at the time Netscape sold for $$$. MS basically dumped & devalued their market to $0.

And thus set off the internet revolution without a $$$ barrier to entry.

Other than the $2000 computer + ISP.

I wasn’t making a judgement on the move, simply pointing out ‘undercut your competitor until they’re broke’ strategy is a classic the government goes after. It wasn’t just that MS had a higher market share.

In addition to the argument others are suggesting, that their market share isn't high enough to qualify, I believe they have also made legal arguments in the past about the sandboxed nature of their platform. I imagine they could also make a convincing argument that it's a feature they sell their customer- one that is at the core of why this requirement exists. They could probably also point to macOS, where they do not have the requirements and the technical environment is different, as support that it's platform-specific related to the sandbox.

I expect the substantial difference is that Microsoft's share of the PC market was far closer to a monopoly than Apple's share of the smartphone market is now (about 40% in the U.S.)

I never understood why 40% is too little to be considered free and clear from monopoly laws. Why not have a smooth gradient

I can't imagine how you would implement such a scheme. For example, forcing Apple to allow non-Safari browsers in the app store is a binary choice, not something you can implement on a gradient. On top of that, market share tends to move around, sometimes a lot, so you would be changing the rules of the game constantly.

40% definitely is low enough to escape scrutiny as a monopoly, in any case. More than half of everyone who buys a smartphone chooses something non-Apple.

So if every top vendor did that, you'd have something like a cartel, except it wouldn't just be high prices, it would be "once you're in our ecosystem, no more interchangeable parts for you, we own the whole stack". It's a bit like feudalism!

Microsoft only got in trouble because they started selling IE as a separate product, then later added it to Windows. If they had just included it as a native Windows "accessory" from the beginning like Minesweeper or Calculator for no extra charge then it would have been tougher to make a case against them.

I just downloaded Firefox and Chrome from App Store. Do I miss something?

They are skins around Safari. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

> Unlike Firefox on Android, Firefox for iOS does not support browser add-ons. Additionally, it uses Apple's Webkit rendering engine, rather than Mozilla's Gecko. Both of these limitations are in accordance with Apple's rules for submitting apps to the App Store.

Search for safari, webkit or WKWebView in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios and you'll see how the integration goes.

Calling them skins is not correct at all. Being able to auto translate whole pages or sync all bookmarks and browsing history or passwords in iOS chrome is not merely a skin.

Those are both Safari based on iOS. Specifically, they can't use their real rendering engine - they have to use the safari one.

No PWAs

Chrome is available on the App Store

And is Safari based on iOS