On March 21st, the US Department of Justice sued Apple for monopolizing smartphone technology markets and violating antitrust laws such as the Sherman Act. The Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law on July 2, 1890 in order to prevent trusts that dominated major industries such as the Standard Oil Trust.  

This is not the first time that the U.S. government has gone after a large technology corporation for controlling the market and disrupting competition. In 1998, the Department of Justice sued Microsoft for antitrust charges; Microsoft was accused of preventing customers from installing software made by other companies and making consumers spend more money by bundling programs with its operating system. Microsoft eventually lost the suit and was convicted of violating multiple sections of the Sherman Act. It was due to this Microsoft case that there was a suitable market environment for the growth of tech companies including Google and Apple. 

Now, Apple is being sued for inhibiting competition in the market by manipulating terms of contracts with developers, controlling the App Store to prevent cloud-streaming apps, and using its Application Programming Interface (API) to undermine competitors in messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets. API is the mechanism that enables software components to communicate with each other. Apple is being accused of making the functionality, quality, and security of apps not under the Apple umbrella worse in order to force the consumer to buy only Apple products.  If Apple were to lose the case, the future of the iPhone may be very different: messaging would look the same even when communicating with Android users, consumers would be able to tap and pay with an app other than Apple Pay, customers could buy a non-Apple smartwatch with all the features that exist on the Apple Watch, and gamers could stream games through a cloud-streaming app similar to how tv shows can be streamed through one app!