[jonwinstanley]

Apple make billions every quarter and at this point no one can realistically unseat them.

They collect pretty much all the profit in the phone market.

They don’t technically have a monopoly, but they are in an incredibly strong position which is close to being guaranteed for the short and medium term.

[enriquec]

"fine, they don't have a monopoly - which I stated as fact - but they are too successful for my liking and I get a high off of forcing compliance"

[jonwinstanley]

To be clear, I'm a massive fan of Apple.

Was just trying to explain that although they don't technically have a monopoly in the phone market, they do hold a huge amount of power.

In a basic sense, monopolies were outlawed to try to keep markets fair, but Apple are in such a strong position now that they have pretty much the same level of influence that a company with an actual monopoly would have.

[theshrike79]

Being highly profitable isn't illegal, monopolies are.

[jonwinstanley]

Sure. But what was the whole reason for making monopolies illegal?

[Jtsummers]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act - You can read about it here and branch out to other resources and articles.

It's not about profit, directly at least. A company making twice the profit while selling half the product of their competitor is not in any violation of anti-monopoly/trust/whatever laws.