Apple Fights Monopoly Charges in $1.8 Billion Antitrust Trial

Apple is in court in the U.K. this week defending itself against monopoly-related charges.

As Bloomberg News reported Monday (Jan. 13), the potentially $1.8 billion class action suit before London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal accuses the tech giant of holding millions of iPhone and iPad users “captive” and forcing them to pay excessively high App Store commissions.

“It has been able to derive exorbitant profits from the App Store because it is a monopolist on the relevant market,” attorneys for the claimants said in documents prepared for the case, per the Bloomberg report.

Apple’s lawyers, meanwhile, are set to argue that its customers have not suffered any loss, and that Apple’s commissions are fair and reasonable.

“If Apple had acted as a monopolist and failed to innovate, it would have been wiped out by the pace of innovation from its competitors,” company attorneys said in court filings.

Lead plaintiff Rachel Kent filed the case in 2021, with her lawyers estimating that Apple could pay $1.8 billion to compensate 20 million U.K. users who purchased apps or subscriptions on their Apple devices since October 2015.

A report on the suit by Reuters notes that this is the first mass lawsuit against a Big Tech company under the U.K.’s fledgling class-action system, with several similar cases still to come. For example, a $1.1 billion case involving Google’s app developer commissions is set to begin later this year.

Apple is also facing a separate class action suit from app developers in Great Britain over its App Store commission. That suit, filed last month, alleges that the up-to-30% commission the company charges has limited competition in the British tech sector.

If the plaintiffs succeed, Apple could have to pay as many as 13,000 developers as much as $995 million in fees, competition policy professor and lead plaintiff Sean Ennis said in December.

Ennis first announced the suit in 2023, arguing that Apple’s commissions are “excessive” and made possible due to what he said was the company’s app distribution monopoly.

“The charges are unfair in their own right and constitute abusive pricing,” Ennis said at the time. “They harm app developers and also app buyers.”

Apple argued at the time that 85% of the developers on its App Store don’t pay a commission and that the company is helping developers throughout Europe gain access to countries and customers around the world.