Apple CEO Tim Cook will take the witness stand Friday to defend the company's iPhone app store against charges that it has grown into an illegal monopoly – one far more profitable than his predecessor Steve Jobs envisioned when it opened up 13 years ago.
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The technology company is counting on Cook's appearance to put the finishing touches on Apple's defense against an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, maker of the popular video game Fortnite.
Epic is trying to topple the so-called "walled garden" for iPhone and iPad apps that welcomes users and developers while keeping competition out. Created by Jobs a year after the iPhone's 2007 debut, the App Store has become a key revenue source for Apple, a money-making machine that helped power the company to a $57 billion profit in its last fiscal year.
Epic is trying to prove that the store has morphed into a price-gouging vehicle that not only reaps a 15% to 30% commission from in-app transactions, but blocks apps from offering other payment alternatives. That extends to just showing a link that would open a web page offering commission-free ways to pay for subscriptions, in-game items and the like.
Apple fiercely defends the commissions as a fair way for app makers to help pay for innovations and security controls that have benefited both iPhone users and app developers, including Epic. Apple says it has invested more than $100 billion in such features.
It also argues that App Store commissions mirror fees charged by major video game consoles — Sony's PlayStation, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Switch — as well as a similar app store run by Google for more than 3 billion mobile Android devices. That is roughly twice the number of active iPhones, iPads and iPods that rely on Apple's store for apps.
