Wesley Hilliard
In an interview after the antitrust hearing on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook says that Apple buys companies to overcome obstacles, and not to limit competition.
After Tim Cook appeared in front of the House Antitrust Subcommittee on Wednesday, the company's various business practices have been called into question. Cook insisted that Apple was not making purchases to end competition, but to implement new technology or talent to better their platforms.
"If you look at the things behind the investigation, the things are acquisitions, and if you noticed, we didn't get any questions on acquisitions because our approach on acquisitions has been to buy companies where we have challenges, and IP, and then make them a feature of the phone," Cook said in an interview with CNBC.
The other companies in question, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, have all been questioned similarly. Acquisitions that appeared to end competition with their companies were all challenged by the subcommittee. Amazon was questioned over its purchase of Diapers.com, and Facebook about its purchase of Instagram.
At Wednesday's hearing, Cook was not questioned about any of Apple's major acquisitions. SRI was purchased to bring Siri to the iPhone, and Workflow enabled Shortcuts to become native to the iOS platform.
Apple's biggest public acquisition was the $3 Billion Beats By Dre takeover in 2014, which lead to the creation of Apple Music. The Beats platform still exists within Apple and competes directly with Apple's own AirPods brand.
"An example of that was Touch ID," Cook continued. "We bought a company that accelerated a Touch ID at a point."
Apple purchases a company every few weeks, and they do not always publicly announce such acquisitions. Dark Sky, the hyper-local weather app, was one such recent purchase. The weather service will be implemented in iOS 14, and its Android app removed from Google Play.
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19 Comments
I think Apple inc. & Amazon are cool. Facebook is alright. But google man they are messed up.
Apple is the only moral company in the bunch. Sad.
An evil company.
Oh come on Tim. I’m a big Apple fan and have their phones since the beginning and several Macs. That being said, the days of “competition” may be gone. Let’s face it, Apple is now so huge it just scoops up anything that is really new and can put their own take on it in their products. They likely have an army of lawyers to protect their stuff which is fine but could also attack anybody trying to get into the tech world too. The chance of 2 guys starting up a new tech company in a garage and having it last are just about zero. Those days are over. Am I overreacting? As much as I like Apple, it is obvious how they and a few other tech companies are now just huge to the point you wonder if anything new will come from anywhere else.
It’s perfectly legal to buy up companies, technologies and patents to better compete OR prevent competitors from gaining a leg up. That’s just business. More competitors will simply enter the same market if profits are excessive or create new markets (these are commonly known as ‘disruptive events’) to better compete.