Can anyone explain this to me? The article states: Apple has 65 percent market share in the U.S. smartphone market and 70 percent in the ‘performance’ category, but a designation of monopoly power typically requires a company to have a higher share of the market. Is a monopoly not considered as >50%? There are other points made in the article of course but specifically this one doesn’t make sense to me.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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You might be confusing monopoly with majority. A majority is >50%. There's no exact percentage for colloquial "monopoly," but it usually means the only player. For example, if your only Internet service provider is Comcast, they are a monopoly in your area.
Under this definition, apple isn't a monopoly because you can also use Samsung, Google, etc. cellphones.
However, in US law, a firm may be able to exercise monopoly power (that is, to be able to raise prices without so many customers moving to competitors that the price-raiser loses money (basically)). This is different in different fields and sectors, but caselaw has developed some guidelines for assumptions about being able to exercise monopoly power.
I believe it is something like a company with >75% market share is presumed to be able to exercise monopoly power. Since, according to the article, Apple has less than this, they are arguing that they cannot exercise monopoly power and are therefore not a monopoly.
However, that percentage is not the end of the analysis. The presumption of being able to exercise monopoly power is weaker below 75%, but evidence can still be used to demonstrate apple does indeed have this power (or, without enough evidence, that they do not).
Based on this alone, it seems like apple will not be able to get the case dismissed and that it will need to go into deeper analysis and factfinding to figure out if apple really is a monopoly.
Hope this helps :)
It's explained in the next sentence:
Apple has argued that it should be judged based on its global market share, which is at 20 percent.
So they're arguing that they're not a monopoly outside of the US
I did see that - I was just confused by the second part of the sentence I highlighted. Odd semantics, maybe