Dear US and EU tech police, Apple isn’t the only “bad guy” on the smartphone market

In case you’ve been living under a rock in the past few weeks, the Department of Justice is suing Apple for having an “illegal monopoly over the smartphone market” in the United States.

If you scroll through the comments on social media (including YouTube reports about the lawsuit), you’ll see that many people seem to be thrilled about the lawsuit against Apple. They even think the anti-competitiveness lawsuit against Cupertino was long overdue.

Of course, others share the opinion that the US (or any) government shouldn’t have direct influence over how our phones are made and how they work - especially when the companies making them are private.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about taking Apple to court now - nearly 20 years after Cupertino first entered the smartphone market/business. In fact, I think one of the most interesting questions to ask here is: “Why now?”...

If Apple does indeed have a “monopoly” over the smartphone market in the US, why is the US government getting involved just now? Apple’s been the leading phone-maker in the US since… forever.

Sure, you could argue the US DoJ has been gathering evidence, which would be a valid reason for the delay of the lawsuit, but even this doesn’t answer another fair question some are asking… Why Apple? Or rather, why only Apple?

To be clear, I’m not actually trying to get the US government to file a lawsuit against another phone-maker (not that I could). But if we’re about to put an end to the unjust practices in the phone-making business, here are a few of Android’s own controversial actions/ideas we can take a magic wand on…

Dear US and EU tech police! Samsung and Google deserve the same level of scrutiny as Apple and the iPhone

Samsung and the Exynos precedent - this should (probably) be illegal too

There’s no way I’m not starting with one of the longest-standing injustices in the world of Android, which is Samsung’s willingness to market Galaxy flagships as the exact same phones, while selling different versions of them in different regions of the world.

In case you’re not familiar, the Galaxy S24 you can buy in the United States is in fact different from the Galaxy S24 you’ll get in Europe and the UK. The two phones of the same name ship with two different processors. Taking it a step farther, the version of the Galaxy S24+ flagship sold in the EU comes with only 8GB of RAM versus the default 12GB offered in the US and elsewhere.

While the differences between the Snapdragon version of the Galaxy S24 series sold in the US and the Exynos one sold in Europe (amongst other regions) is relatively negligible (as discovered by the Tech Chap - see the video above), the two models still deliver different results in different areas like the camera, battery life, and overall performance.

This difference is even more exaggerated if we go just a few years back and look at the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S22, and Galaxy S21 flagships, which have been known to deliver noticeably better performance in their Snapdragon versions. And I don’t know about you but this seems a bit… unjust.

Android’s lacklustre (at times, unacceptable) software support is another crime against our smartphone-addicted humanity

Here’s another favorite of mine - Android software support…

To this day, in certain cases (and with certain phone-makers), we’re witnessing the launch of not-so-cheap Android phones, which turn out to have extremely poor software support. Those phone makers might/might not be Motorola/Lenovo, ZTE, TCL, and a bunch of other Chinese phone-makers that don’t do business in the US.

It goes without saying, Apple’s iPhone has been the gold standard for reliable software support pretty much forever now, which is one of the reasons I can recommend it so easily. On the other hand, lacklustre software support makes new phones unsustainable, unreliable, insecure, and ultimately unusable in the long term, which goes against everything the EU believes, by the way.

In fact, although Samsung is doing a great job in this regard today, even the South Korean giant would’ve made this anti-list some 2-3 years ago, which goes to show that Android’s been getting away with murder for a long time.

For example, I hesitate to recommend otherwise great-value phones like the Motorola Edge 2023 and the nubia Z60 Ultra exactly due to their proven track record of extremely poor software support. Take Motorola’s $900 Edge+ 2023 flagship (launched with Android 13) - it still hasn’t received Android 14, while my Pixel 8 Pro is already eligible for the Android 15 beta.

Suing Apple would apparently help “lower smartphone prices for consumers” in the US, says the US government, but premium Android phones are more expensive than iPhones

In the 88-page lawsuit, the DoJ says that “this case is about freeing the smartphone market from Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers…”.

For starters, I don’t see how opening iMessage and the Apple Watch to Android would make iPhones and/or Android phones more affordable, but that’s a different story...

Talking exclusively about smartphone prices, Samsung’s top level Galaxy S24 Ultra flagship costs more than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And not that I’m going after Samsung, but it was the Galaxy S20 Ultra, which started at the head-spinning $1,400 back in 2020. For reference, Apple’s entry-level premium flagship, the iPhone 12 Pro, started at “only” $1,000.

Just recently, Google also joined the $1,000 flagship club with the Pixel 8 Pro. Sure, Google also sells a $500 Pixel 7a for those on a budget, while Samsung has the $400 Galaxy A35, but so does Apple thanks to the $430 iPhone SE (due for a major redesign in the coming months). Not to mention, “cheap” phones are better than ever now - just look at the $350 Nothing Phone 2a.

“Anti-competitive practices” and anti-consumer behavior: If Apple has them, Android does too: Let’s make (all) phones great again?

To wrap it up, in true DoJ spirit, I’m coming in hot with a few quick-fire “lawsuit suggestions”...

• One could argue that Google’s symbiotic relationship (sorry, partnership) with Samsung is becoming pretty anticompetitive towards other Android phone-makers; as of this moment, the Galaxy S24 ships with exclusive Android 14 features not available to other phones, which (supposedly) run on the same version of Android 14, and something’s telling me this won’t be the last time we see Samsung and Google giving each other a helping hand…

• Yes, Apple ships the iPhone with a bunch of pre-installed Apple apps/services but most Android phones are full of third-party apps/bloatware (some of which you can’t uninstall); meanwhile Xiaomi phones feature third-party ads in the phone UI and within apps; I hope the Chinese government is reading this! (well, it was… until the Huawei ban)

• Apparently, the US government wants Apple to embrace “super-apps” like the Chinese WeChat instead of being afraid they’ll make users less likely to buy an iPhone (because using a single app for everything would make switching between Android and iPhone easier); but how/why is it OK for a single app to “monopolize” all of your phone’s features? Just asking…

• Like the Apple Watch doesn’t work with a Samsung phone, my Pixel Watch also doesn’t work with my iPhone; I’m launching a lawsuit!

• What about the poor or inexistent customer service and hardware support for certain phones sold in the US and/or the EU?

But I’m just trying to make a point… And the point is that if we’ll be making the smartphone market a better place for everyone, we should probably go all the way… Especially if certain practices are indeed “anti-competitive and anti-consumer” as claimed by the JoD.