After App Store, Apple attracted an antitrust complaint on its AirTags from the US Department of Justice, as Politico reported.
Citing some sources, the news outlet stated that DoJ is in the nascent stages of making an antitrust complaint against Apple. This comes after the Tile – a smart device tracker accused Apple of limiting their hardware access to third-party services like them, or exchanging with their core technology.
Focusing Apple AirTags
AirTags are Apple’s in-home-made device trackers built so well in terms of quality and performance. They use Apple’s ultra-wideband technology and the Find My network to locate devices – seemingly better than other trackers which use Bluetooth for this operation.
This led some of those third-party OEMs to accuse Apple, as they’re intentionally being blocked from using Apple’s Find My network to perform their operations – which could cater to better results. One among them is Tile – a popular device tracker that accused Apple for blocking access to Find My network on iOS.
Tile opened up on this in a testimony before Congress, where it said Apple forced them to give up their software ecosystems in order to use the Find My network on iOS. Though Tile eventually declined it, this accusation led lawmakers to think about Apple’s anti-competitive practices in the hardware industry.
Currently, the iPhone maker is under fire for anti-competitive App Store policies and payments to developers. Apple is forced to allow developers to use third-party payment methods for their apps in App Store, albeit with some restrictions.
Now, it may face similar results too in its hardware line-up. According to Politico, sources told that DOJ lawyers are in the early stages of drafting an antitrust complaint against Apple. Antitrust investigations on Apple began as early as 2019 when the larger part of it was focused on the tech giant’s software part.
