[shagie]

One could argue that they are purchasing companies to incorporate them into the company's product directly rather than relying on a 3rd party vendor to supply it.

Two examples: AuthenTech and Kiva

https://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/scott-moody

https://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/mick-mountz

The argument (I believe) is for leaving those companies as stand alone and having Apple and Amazon rely upon them not going bankrupt or getting purchased by some other competitor and disrupting their own company.

You've seen that happen before - BigCo is using a 3rd party vendor, someone buys it and then turns around and starts charging BigCo lots of money.

To prevent that from happening, BigCo should have bought the company when it started using it (if possible) to prevent that disruption in its systems, products, or services.

[scarface74]

And because Apple bought Authentec, it cornered the market on fingerprint base authentication…oh wait.

[mrkurt]

You're not really making coherent points here. No one is arguing that vertical monopolization corners a market on components.

When Apple bought Authentec, they increased their market power and reduced the market power of competitors.

As an independent company, Authentec could sell to Apple AND Apple's competitors. Apple obviously won't sell components to their competitors. They were incentivized to purchase Authentect to restrict competition.

[scarface74]

So no one is arguing that a “vertical monopoly” corners the market. In that case, what are they monopolizing?

> When Apple bought Authentec, they increased their market power and reduced the market power of competitors.

The existence proof is that there were fingerprint authentication methods before and after the acquisition. Who exactly did they hurt?

> As an independent company, Authentec could sell to Apple AND Apple's competitors. Apple obviously won't sell components to their competitors. They were incentivized to purchase Authentect to restrict competition.

Well if that was the purpose - to prevent competitors from having fingerprint sensors - they did a horrible job.

[shagie]

In that model, would it be reasonable for another agency (company, PE, billionaire with an axe to grind) to come along and buy them and then raise the prices to rent seek on Apple?

You appear to be arguing that larger companies shouldn't be able to secure their supply chain and instead be forced to follow the whims of the market as companies go in and out of business forcing the larger company to either (a) build it in house or (b) keep redesigning every time something changes.

[mrkurt]

One thing about antitrust is that it's a set of restrictions only applies to companies with a certain amount of market power. It's not a set of rules that are designed to be fair for everyone.

So, yes, some other company could conceivably do something to diminish Apple's market power and not run afoul of antitrust. And I think that's ok?

Companies with too much market power should not be able to vertically integrate to increase their market power. They definitely should not be able to do this via M&A.

This is, again, not meant to be "fair". Because there's no such thing. Companies of a certain size are inherently unfair competition, antitrust rules just limit how they can flex.

[scarface74]

Anti trust has nothing to do with market power in the US.

There has never been any restriction on “vertically integrating” and you have not shown where competitors are unable to buy alternatives because of it. That includes ARM chips, fingerprint sensors and every other component that Apple uses.