iPhones Cost More Due to Apple’s Agreements with Web Browser Makers, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action alleges Apple has entered into unlawful agreements with browser makers, including Google, to prevent them from deploying their own browser engines on the iPhone and effectively keep certain “progressive web apps” from threatening the dominance of the App Store. 

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The 95-page antitrust lawsuit summarizes that Apple’s apparent agreements with Google and other web browser makers, including Microsoft and Mozilla, have allowed the tech juggernaut to prevent new entries into the smartphone market—thus protecting Apple and Google’s alleged “duopoly” in the space—and charge “supracompetitive prices” for iPhones. 

“No smartphone can enter the market in the United States without either licensing Android from Apple’s co-conspirator Google or creating its own smartphone [operating system] from scratch,” the suit reads. “As such, there has been no successful entry by any smartphone platform to challenge the Apple and Google ecosystems—and there has been no check on the prices Apple charges iPhone customers.” 

Nearly every smartphone nationwide is tied to either Apple or Google’s “closed ecosystem” of apps and services, which must be obtained through the former’s App Store or the latter’s Play Store, the case states. For years, the filing says, Apple and Google, which is not named as a defendant in the case, have kept themselves insulated from “meaningful competition,” even from their most well-resourced competitors, through their respective closed ecosystems of apps, developers and users. 

According to the case, the iOS-Android duopoly has been fortified with two “powerful network effects” that have essentially barred competitors from entering the market—namely, users’ desire to only use smartphones with a “critical mass of third-party apps” and app developers’ willingness to invest in a new smartphone platform only if there are enough users to justify costs.  

“To meaningfully compete with Apple or Google, a newcomer would have to develop not just a smartphone but a smartphone operating system, then convince developers to build apps for it, and then convince users to switch to the new smartphone platform,” the complaint relays. 

Per the case, Apple and Google have “supercharged” these prongs by designing proprietary languages and development tools for iOS and Android, with the effect of creating swathes of “purpose-trained” developers with specialized experience in either Apple or Google’s mobile operating systems. 

“Companies as powerful and well-resourced as Microsoft have impaled themselves upon [Apple and Google’s barrier to entry], failing to take even a small fraction of market share from iPhone and the smartphones running Google’s Android operating system despite a multiyear attempt at a Windows Phone,” the complaint notes. 

However, one possible way around Apple and Google’s market barriers is through the engine that powers a smartphone’s web browser, the suit says. Per the case, though every mobile app running on the iPhone must be approved by Apple and sold through the App Store, the rise of so-called progressive web apps—which run on browser engines and, in many cases, are “indistinguishable in look, feel, and function” from native mobile apps—posed a threat to Apple’s control. The suit explains that a modern browser is, “for all intents and purposes, a potential app store in itself—and a cross-platform one at that,” making possible the rise of “code-once, run-anywhere [web apps] that would allow developers to write one full-featured web app, and then deploy it across every major platform, both desktop and mobile.” 

According to the lawsuit, this threat was not taken lightly by Apple or Google at the end of the last decade, as the rise of the aforementioned progressive web apps with third-party browser engines “could mean the end of the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store” as the sole entry points into the smartphone market. 

To combat this threat, the case alleges, Apple entered into agreements with browser makers whereby they consented to not deploy their browser engines on the iPhone. 

“Instead, every web browser on iOS and every iOS app relying on a browser engine must, by agreement, use Apple’s browser engine, called WebKit,” the filing relays, claiming that, as a result, every browser running on iOS, no matter how it is branded, is merely Apple’s Safari browser, reskinned. According to the suit, Apple’s WebKit is “far more restrictive” than other browser engines and has hampered the development of progressive web apps on the iPhone. 

Importantly, the case alleges, Apple has made such an agreement with Google, its direct competitor in the smartphone and operating system markets. In particular, Google, by agreement with Apple, has continuously released its apps and widely-used Chrome web browser with Apple’s WebKit instead of Blink, Google’s own browser engine, the suit claims. 

“This has prevented Chome, the world’s number one web browser, from serving as a cross-platform launching pad for [progressive web apps] on smartphones,” the filing contends. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all persons in the United States, including businesses, entities or corporations, that purchased any model iPhone from Apple since January 25, 2020. 

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