CNBC host Jim Cramer has ripped the U.S. Department of Justice after it filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for allegedly creating a monopoly over smartphones. And he’s right.
“I do not like the Justice case against Apple because Apple does so much. But they regard apple as a naked monopolist, it a great company,” Cramer wrote in a string of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “But it is not a joke for Apple and I have strong feelings that Apple is NOT a monopolist!!! Nor is Nvidia These are the best companies in the world. Justice and FTC are just TOO AGGRESSIVE.”
The DoJ alleges that Apple illegally maintains a monopoly over smartphones by selectively imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access points from, developers. Through this monopolization lawsuit, the Justice Department and state Attorneys General are seeking relief to restore competition to these vital markets on behalf of the American public.
I tend to agree with Cramer. As I wrote in January, I’m a proponent of “the less government the better.” The meddling of the UK and US government in Apple’s business is only going to cause problems in the long run. Bet on it.
Besides, I’m not aware of many consumers asking for major changes to the company’s way of doing business. It’s just Apple competitors whining because they make their business models work as well as the Mac/iPhone/iPad/Vision Pro/Apple Watch maker.
And as Daniel Eran Dilger wrote in an AppleInsider article, most governments can’t balance their own budgets, so why do they think they can “fix” Apple?
“Just like a lot of other problems that don’t exist, politicians are racing to offer ‘solutions’ to Apple’s creation of the safest, most productive, and largest level playing field of a platform to ever exist in the history of computing,” Daniel writes. “These ideas have little support among many of Apple’s actual developers outside of a few billionaires and their demands to make even more money by having Apple forced to subsidize their operations.”
So my advice to pity-me companies like Spotify is improve your own products and services. And my advice to the UK, US, and other global governments: until you show you have the brains and expertise to fix many of your own country’s issues, leave companies like Apple alone until/if they pose a real threat. Besides, I’m guessing that most politicians are just jumping on a bandwagon because being against monopolies sounds very noble.
Or, as Daniel writes: “Perhaps governments breaking up “a big monopoly” to introduce smaller solutions that don’t really result in functional markets but only make things worse is not the best solution, and the real solution is to enable, new competitive markets that earn their own customers.”
