Apple isn't anywhere close to a monopoly, though, about a quarter of smartphones. A little more in install base, and a little less in quarterly shipments. [1] Building a phone network has massive capital expenditure costs on infrastructure, building a phone does not.

[1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-smartphone-users-worldw...

The same article you mentioned says that 56% of US/Canada users and 70% of Japanese users have iPhones.

I'd argue that monopolies should be judged on country and not worldwide. As each country has different iMessage popularity, apps restricted by region, earning power, phone availability, etc.

That's market shifting though.

Apple does have a monopoly on the markets running on all their devices, from apps to media, for ~900 million phones. When Apple doesn't completely own the only available market service to it's hardware (that it exclusively gives itself), it still charges a 30% fee to it's competitors for access to it's markets while actively blocking everyone else.

The judge in the Epic case said that Apple though not a monopoly was acting like one and might be on the way to becoming one.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-subcommittee...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/eff-appeals-apples-mon...

So sure. Not a monopoly. But also not far from a monopoly as you claim.

Apple's primary moat isn't hardware, it's software.

Their software moat with IOS is everything.

Software itself is innately a hugely monopolistic industry.

*iOS

IOS is Cisco's router OS. Apple did license it though, to prevent any potential lawsuit...

> building a phone does not.

Companies have a limited output of the materials needed to make a computer. If Apple tells one of these companies you now have an exclusive relationship with us, or else, what is that company going to do?

Anyway, Apple has a monopoly of platform, which is measured between its own base, rather than as an absolute number compared of what % devices are iPhones.