Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
So far, the biggest tech antitrust cases have focused on Facebook and Google — but Apple may soon be joining the pack. Politico is reporting that the Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust case against Apple, alleging that the company “abused its market power to stifle smaller tech companies, including app developers and competing hardware makers.”
It would be the first such case against Apple by a US federal agency, although European antitrust regulators have raised similar cases over the company’s App Store fees and the iPhone’s treatment of tap-to-pay technology. The company has also fended off a number of civil cases from rival companies — most notably, the App Store challenge from Epic Games, which…