Apple: Monopolies of Scale

In a recent article on PC World entitled "Apple's iPhone and iPod Monopolies Must Go," David Coursey rips into Apple for their monopoly and even goes as far as to say that "With the Obama Justice Dept. seemingly looking for evil monopolies to take apart, maybe Apple would be a good place to start."

Now maybe what Coursey is saying is part "tongue and cheek," and on Tech Loaded we prefer to avoid talking politics, but this begs the question: if Apple has successfully created a monopoly, how could one prove that and what have they done that would be considered so wrong that this writer would think that the DOJ should be sent after them?

Apple has built a highly successful business model, but I would hardly call them a monopoly. No where have I gone to a store and seen just one smart phone. There are tons of cheap imitations of the iPod. Just because iTunes has had so many downloads and so many applications doesn't make them a monopoly. I'm not saying that Apple does everything fairly; but that's business. There's many an industry that has been created in the wake of Apple products. And there will be more to come as well. Apple has no reason to "share" the access to iTunes and the music store with other phone and mp3 music players. They stand to benefit from what they create. If people want more access and less restrictions they can easily go outside the Apple Universe and find cheaper alternatives for places to download their music and play it on the go.