CEO Tim Cook: ‘No Reasonable Person’ Calls Apple a Monopoly

Apple CEO Tim Cook stated in a recent interview that “no reasonable person would ever call Apple a monopolist.”

In a recent interview with the German magazine Stern which was translated by Business Insider, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that “no reasonable person would ever call Apple a monopolist.” Cook’s comments come amidst accusations of anti-competitive behavior from music streaming rival Spotify. Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek outlined in a blog post in May the issues that Spotify has with Apple, the music streaming service also started their own website called Time to Play Fair.

Ek believes that this app subscription “tax” is designed to harm streaming services that compete with Apple’s own services, such as Apple Music. Ek says that if Spotify were to pay this tax it would be forced to “artificially inflate” its prices “well above the price of Apple Music,” causing harm to the company’s business. Ek says that if the company doesn’t comply with Apple’s tax, it faces “a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions,” on its app. Ek added that Apple “routinely blocks our experience-enhancing upgrades,” locking competitors out of Apple devices such as Siri, Apple Watch and Homepod.

Apple harshly responded to Spotify’s antitrust claims, laying out the steps that Apple had taken to help Spotify in the development of its app and how Spotify benefited from the App Store.

“After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace,” Apple said in the statement. Apple also noted that in its complaint over the 30 percent “App Store Tax” Spotify failed to note that after the first year, this figure drops to 15 percent.

Apple stated that only a “tiny fraction of their [Spotify’s] subscriptions fall under Apple’s revenue-sharing model.” The statement further added: “Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.”

In a recent interview with Stern, Cook stated: “We only have 30 to 40 apps compared to two million others.” Cook then compared the Apple app store to a supermarket that sells its own-brand items as well as competitors. “The likelihood of [a supermarket] having own-brand products is very high. And who benefits from another product being on the shelf? The customer, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

A New York Times accused Apple of manipulating its App Store to promote Apple’s own apps over its competitors.

Discussing the hot topic of tech regulation, Cook stated: “I’m the first to say the big companies should be thoroughly investigated. I have absolutely no problem with that. I just hope people don’t lump all the big tech companies together.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com