Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones e.g. by entering into exclusivity deals with cell service providers or electronics stores so that you could only find Apple products there (i.e. T-Mobile would only sell iPhones with their contracts and you wouldn't find any Android phones except in some small speciality shops out of town). That's what Google is doing in its markets among other things, i.e. pay tons of money to ensure all virtual store fronts are only stocked with Google products and everything else is hidden behind.
Apple does of course show anti-competitive behavior to a degree, i.e. they purchase the entire production capacity of the most advanced semiconductor fabs to have exclusivity and preserve their edge, but again there are still other players in that market and competition still seems possible. If you want to compare that to what Google is doing in the search and ad space it would translate to them locking up almost all semiconductor suppliers in exclusivity contracts for 10 years so that no other company could ever build any advanced chips in large numbers.
The relevant markets includes, but is not limited to that.
> Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones
Anti-competitive behaviour includes, but is not limited to that.
Either way regulators are taking action.
US Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets[1]
The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market[2]
Well, no. You can install games on your computer however you want.
If Steam was the only possible way to do so, then yeah I would say Valve had a monopoly.
(It's worth noting that Apple has already gotten in trouble for this - the EU has fined them billions and forced them to allow alternative app stores. Hopefully US regulators take inspiration and force them to do the same domestically.)
But the choice isn't between Apple and not having a phone. Android exists, and as long as its a viable choice, Apple isn't a monopoly.
Not only is Apple a monopoly, they become one, and maintain it illegally.
US Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets[1]
The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market[2]
I really don't think you can give a rational explanation other than the courts are mentally troubled. They should have cracked down on both Epic cases or neither.
Epic tried to make this case already, but the judge ruled that the App Store is not a market that Apple can have a monopoly over.
> If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.
This level of certainty is not warranted.
They are both markets in and of themselves, Apple themselves refer to it as a market place and it's a place where trade in particular goods occurs.
You can argue it shouldn't be a market subject to anti-trust laws but US and EU regulators would disagree.
> > If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is. > This level of certainty is not warranted.
Again, you can argue that it's a 'legal' monopoly, but 'legal' or 'illegal', it is a monopoly.
Monopolies are not illegal, but creating or maintaining a monopoly through anti-competitive means is and regulators in the US and EU are acting.
Steve Jobs wrote that "Apple would “force” developers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform." https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Apple has exclusive control over a market (AppStore), which has almost 2 million different products (Apps), 820,000 suppliers (app publishers) and over 1.3 billion customers (active iPhone users) which conducts more trade ($1.1 trillion) than the entire GDP of Luxemburg.
If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.