Apple CEO Tim Cook recently denied the allegation that his company is a monopoly after U.S. regulators and lawmakers started cracking down Silicon Valley’s giant companies. Cook also rejects the calls for breaking up Apple.
During an interview with CBS News during the recent Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, Cook said that although he agrees that Apple should be scrutinized due to the size of the company, he insists that it’s not fair to call Apple a monopoly. He made the statement amidst various reports that the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are launching antitrust probes into Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.
Norah O’Donnell, CBS Evening News managing editor notes that Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has singled out that Apple and other tech giants should be broken up. Warren also said that Apple should divest the App Store. Tim Cook disagrees with this by saying that if you’re selling a good, then you can’t have a product that competes with that good. Additionally, a recent Gartner study reports that Apple’s iPhone had a 13.4% share of the global smartphone market in 2018. Because of this, Apple is being targeted by a class-action lawsuit that alleges it is monopolizing the aftermarket for iPhone apps.
Also during the interview, Tim Cook talked about Apple’s focus on privacy control. Specifically, the company is rolling out a new feature of its upcoming iOS 13. Dubbed “Sign in with Apple,” this new feature will allow Apple customers to use their Apple ID to log in to apps and websites while at the same time allowing them to keep email address private. This will be done by generating a unique random email address.
When asked whether the “Sign in with Apple” feature is the company’s way of taking a shot at Facebook and Google, Tim Cook said that they are not targeting anybody. Apple is just giving its customers the ability to go across numerous web properties minus the fear of knowing that they are under surveillance every time they do so.
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