Image source, Getty Images

We're wrapping up our live coverage, but before we go, here are today's main headlines on the DOJ's landmark case against Apple.

More than a billion people around the world own an iPhone. For many, the appeal is linked to how easily the smartphone integrates with features like iMessage, Apple Pay and the Apple Watch. In a lawsuit, the justice department called out aspects of Apple's business practices, saying it maintains its dominance in the industry by "locking its customers in" and "locking its competitors out".

Here's what the DOJ said:

• Green Bubbles: If you use Android, text messages show up on iPhones with a green bubble instead of blue. The lawsuit claims Apple makes Android messages appear lower in quality and limits functions, leading users to believe the competition is worse
• Apple makes billions of dollars in fees by charging credit card companies and banks every time Apple Pay is used to process a purchase. The DOJ says Apple has prevented developers from accessing the hardware needed to use the tap-to-pay process - compelling banks to use the Apple system
• To use an Apple Watch, you need to have an iPhone as they won't connect with Android phones. Given this, the DOJ said Apple uses smartwatches, a costly accessory, to stop its customers from choosing other phones

Reacting to the lawsuit, an Apple spokesperson said: "If successful, [it] would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple".

The spokesperson added that Apple believes the lawsuit will fail, and it will be asking the court to dismiss the case.

It is the third time the company has been sued by the justice department since 2009, but the first under the Biden administration.

Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Apple of maintaining its dominance of the smartphone market by "locking its customers in" and "locking its competitors out".

You can read more about the case here.

This page was edited by Brandon Livesay, Tiffany Wertheimer and Andrew Humphrey. The writers were Natalie Sherman, Tom Gerken, Bernd Debusmann, Malu Cursino, Alex Smith and Ece Goksedef.

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The complaint also mentions Apple Wallet - an app where users can store things like payment cards, train passes and event tickets.

“Apple deprives users of the benefits and innovations third-party wallets would provide,” the DOJ says.

Speaking to the media earlier, Garland said that Apple encourages banks to use Apple Wallet, while “exerting its monopoly power to block" them from developing their own payment products for iPhone users.

He also argued that it would be the function “that makes a digital wallet, a wallet.”

“Cross-platform digital wallets would offer an easier, more seamless, and potentially more secure way for users to switch from the iPhone to another smartphone,” the DOJ said.

And at the end, this system prevents people to leave, locking them into their payment system, it added.

Image source, Getty Images

In the justice department's announcement of the lawsuit against Apple, Jonathan Kanter - assistant attorney general - recalled a similar anti-trust case the US took against Microsoft back in 1998.

Microsoft was accused of holding a "dominant, persistent, and increasing share of the world-wide" personal computer market.

"Even if Apple's Mac OS were included in the relevant market, Microsoft's share would still stand well above 80%," the department said at the time.

Microsoft lost that case, and it was ruled that the company "violated multiple sections" of a major antitrust law - although in the end the result was partially overturned, and both sides reached a settlement.

Speaking today, Kanter said it "played a pivotal role in ushering the next generation of technologies".

"Apple itself was a significant beneficiary of that case," he said, adding that he believes they are today doing the same thing Microsoft was accused of over 25 years ago.

Image source, Getty Images

How does Apple's allegedly illegal behaviour play out in the world of smartwatches?

According to the DOJ complaint, the company initially gave smartwatches made by other companies the ability to connect to iPhones to access information like calendars.

But after launching its own product, it began limiting outside access, so that people with rival smartwatches can no longer respond to notifications or calendar invites, the DOJ says.

Apple is also accused of making it harder for rival smartwatches to stay connected to the iPhone, as well as creating other barriers.

The Department of Justice's lawsuit will not help the public, but instead help other companies who pay for Apple's services, according to a spokesperson for the company.

It disputes the DOJ's claim that people stay with the company because they are "locked in", saying that customers stick with Apple because they are happy.

The company is not required to share its work with others, the spokesperson says, adding that Apple has recently changed its rules for messaging and cloud streaming game apps.

It also accused the justice department of changing its theory about the case multiple times throughout the investigation.

The spokesperson says Apple believes the lawsuit will fail, and it will be asking the court to dismiss the case.

Image source, Getty Images

The DOJ says Apple has limited other messaging apps from accessing iPhone features like the camera and barred them from operating in the background, to benefit its own messaging service.

And it also takes aim at the way Apple treats messages from people using other kinds of phones, noting that it creates a green bubble, makes the conversation unencrypted and creates grainy videos - allegedly a signal "to users that rival smartphones are lower quality because the experience of messaging friends and family who do not own iPhones is worse—even though Apple, not the rival smartphone, is the cause of that degraded user experience.

Here's another clip from US Attorney General Merrick Garland's press conference earlier, where he laid out his case against Apple.

Garland says the company makes consumers "pay higher prices" by holding a monopoly.

"Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies break the law," he said.

Press the play button above to watch.

Image source, Getty Images

A monopoly is when one company is the sole supplier of a certain type of product, and there are no close alternatives.

Under US antitrust laws, a monopoly is only illegal when that company resorts to anti-competitive tactics - by harming their opposition, for example - in order to maintain that monopoly.

The Department of Justice says there are also laws in place to protect against specific types of anti-competitive conduct including:

• Illegal mergers - where two companies join forces, lessening competition in the market
• An illegal tying agreement - where a company forces customers to buy one product to buy another
• Predatory pricing - where a company sets its prices very low to drive competitors out of business. At that point, the company can then set the market price for these products

Antitrust laws, the DOJ says, prohibit conduct that would "deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition".

In this case, the justice department says a lack of competition means consumers "pay higher prices".

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Washington

Antitrust expert, Vanderbilt University Professor Rebecca Allensworth, says this case is "really important" and a "blockbuster", even if it has ample precedent.

"At a clip of about one a year, they [the justice department] drop a big monopolisation case against one of the major tech platforms," she says.

Allensworth tells me today's case against Apple marks the last of the big four - Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon - to be targeted.

The case may ultimately lead to "behavioural remedies" on the part of Apple, she adds, which would mean it has to "do things differently".

"It's not about breaking up Apple into small units or spinning off divisions," she says.

Image source, Getty Images

We've been focusing our attention on US technology giant Apple, which became the first company to hit a stock market valuation of $3tn (£2.2tn) - yes, trillion - back in 2022.

Now, the company is valued at $2.6tn.

The iPhone typically accounts for around half of the company's sales, while it is also well-known for its iPad tablets and Mac computers.

But also big money earners include the software sold through the App store, storage space via the iCloud and Apple services such as its music, television and fitness subscription platforms.

Anne Witt, Professor of Law at EDHEC business school in France, says the ruling can be simply summarised as "not good news for Apple" - but she also says there is a key difference between this and the EU's fine we told you about earlier.

"While European competition agencies investigate and decide the case, the US antitrust authorities do not have this power - but need to convince a judge that the company distorted competition.

"This is notoriously difficult to do, and the last time a US court found a Big Tech company guilty of monopolisation dates back to 2001... no doubt Apple will fight the US Department of Justice’s allegations in court.”

She says the lawsuit is a sign that things are "getting very uncomfortable" for big tech firms like Apple, following similar action elsewhere.

"While the US antitrust authorities were slower to scrutinise than their European counterparts, things changed in 2019, when the US Department of Justice and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) divided up the task of scrutinising [big tech firms] under the US antitrust rules.

"The DOJ took Google and Apple, and the FTC took Facebook and Amazon, and there are lawsuits pending against all four companies now.

“The potential implications are very serious - while the European Commission tends to impose financial penalties, the US antitrust authorities are pursuing structural remedies in several of these cases... meaning that they are asking the courts to break up the companies."

Zoe Kleinman
Technology editor, BBC News

Apple has never made any secret about the power of what’s known as its “ecosystem”.

Fans of the brand – of whom there are many millions - have proudly bought into it.

I know plenty of people who only use Apple gadgets.

They like the design, they trust the company, and they appreciate the way in which Apple products work together.

Apple kit is also generally considered to be more secure than its rivals – and it is, largely because its operating system doesn’t have to be compatible with multiple platforms.

I had a recent chat with a friend who was considering an Android handset but ultimately didn’t want the “faff” of switching.

And those two points rather neatly sum up the argument here.

Is Apple protecting its customers or making it difficult for them to leave? Clearly nobody is being held hostage. But other companies would kill for that exclusivity.

The question the court now has to decide is whether that’s fair.

Joe Tidy
Cyber correspondent

Image source, Colton Adamski

Earlier this month we told the story of Colton Adamski – an entrepreneur in the US who is aiming to launch one of the first, maybe even the first, non-Apple app store thanks to new EU laws that have just come into effect.

Colton and his team are cheering on the DOJ today, because for years he has accused Apple of preventing people like him from creating app marketplaces for iPhone.

For six years he has run what he calls a "grey store", controversially offering copies of apps that customers can download using "sideloading methods" which circumvent Apple’s strict rules.

He says Apple’s new rules in the EU are still "Godfather-like" but hopes that with the US now pushing for Apple to loosen its grip on iPhones there too, he can finally have a chance to build the legitimate app store business he’s been aiming for.

Image source, Getty Images

The other target of the suit is Apple Pay.

Apple makes billions of dollars in fees, by charging credit card companies and banks every time Apple Pay is used to process a purchase.

In theory those companies could offer the same tap-to-pay ability through their own apps, but the DOJ says Apple has used its control over app creation to "selectively prohibit" developers from accessing the hardware needed for make the tap-to-pay process happen.

The traditional financial giants have been complaining about this for some time.

Michelle Fleury
New York business correspondent

“Buy your mom an iPhone”

A quote that’s come back to haunt Apple CEO Tim Cook.

At Vox Media’s Code 2022 conference, he was asked by a journalist what Apple was doing to make it easier to message across platforms with rich communication services (RCS).

“It’s tough”, the questioner lamented, “not to make it personal but I can’t send my mom certain videos.”

That is when Tim Cook cracked the joke now quoted on page 39 of the complaint, which prosecutors allege is an example of how compatibility isn’t a priority for Apple.

Image source, Getty Images

The lawsuit is focused on Apple's control of the distribution and creation of apps via its App store.

The store is the only way to download apps to its phones. And Apple reserves the right to approve any apps that want to be listed in its online store - rules it often enforces "selectively" according to the complaint.

Apple has said publicly that those controls are necessary for privacy and security considerations but the DOJ says its "documents tell a different story" - that the rules are about profit.

For example:

It says Apple has blocked "super apps" - which bundle lots of different apps together, and could ultimately make it less of a hassle to switch phone brands - from emerging in the US though "arbitrary" App store design rules.

The complaint also claims that Apple has thwarted cloud streaming apps, which reduce the need for expensive hardware, with rules that require companies to submit updates for approval, even though those updates could come hourly.

In its statement, Apple continues by saying that a successful lawsuit against them would set a "dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology".

"We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it," Apple said.

Apple has said the Department of Justice's lawsuit against the company "threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets".

The company says it innovates "every day", and a successful lawsuit would "hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple".

It's not only the US who is announcing a lawsuit against Apple, we are also hearing that the European Union antitrust regulators are expected to investigate Apple, Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google.

Reuters is reporting that they will use powers under the Digital Markets Act, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

According to those same sources, the European Commission will likely announce the investigations in the coming days and issue decisions before EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's term ends in November.

Anat Alon-Beck, a business law professor at Case Western University and antitrust expert, says the claims laid out by the Department of Justice are "far more extensive" than the previous fights Apple has faced in the European Union.

"it’s not just about the 30% app store fee, but about the core unfair practices of Apple," she says.

She adds that "Apple systematically excludes rivals from the Apple ecosystem" and that it was "about time" for the DOJ to act.