Microsoft’s mobile ambitions may have been put on ice again with the canceling of a Surface Duo 2 sequel, but its concepts live on in a new DOJ lawsuit against Apple for antitrust.
To illustrate the extent of Apple’s antitrust practices have shaped the smartphone landscape, the US Department of Justice references the 2014 marketplace where Amazon, HTC, LG, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone were all viable options until most ultimately failed to due entrenched ecosystem barriers put in place by Apple.
Many prominent, well-financed companies have tried and failed to successfully enter the relevant markets because of these entry barriers. Past failures include Amazon (which released its Fire mobile phone in 2014 but could not profitably sustain its business and exited the following year); Microsoft (which discontinued its mobile business in 2017); HTC (which exited the market by selling its smartphone business to Google in September 2017); and LG (which exited the smartphone market in 2021). Today, only Samsung and Google remain as meaningful competitors in the U.S. performance smartphone market. Barriers are so high that Google is a distant third to Apple and Samsung despite the fact that Google controls development of the Android operating system.
THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
The DOJ is going to have an uphill battle between connecting the various anecdotal circumstances which led to the demise of Windows Phone as it relates to Apple and its burgeoning iPhone smartphone dominance at the time. Yet, there is a world in which the DOJ could lean on Apple’s co-founder previous statements of Windows Phone admiration to highlight that the competition alone couldn’t rival the iPhone’s increasing dominance.
Just for looks and beauty I definitely favor the Windows Phone over Android. Compared to Android, there’s no contest I’m just shocked, I haven’t seen anything yet that isn’t more beautiful than the other platforms. In my opinion it sets the mark for user interface. I would recommend it over my Android phones.
Steve Wozniak – NewDomain.net. podcast interview 2012
While the market coalesced around Samsung and Apple, former co-founder and CEO of Apple Steve Jobs went as far as to congratulate Windows Phone for joining the smartphone market with the following words written to the team tasked with competing with the iPhone.
Your team did a great job with the design of Windows Phone.
Jon Bell – Former Windows Phone designer
It’s still a v1, so there’s lots to do. Good luck!
Nevertheless, the DOJ will need more than revisionist Windows Phone history to help bolster its case against Apple and the claims of antitrust brought forth in its latest lawsuit. As ironic as it is to report, former Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky points out in an ironic defense of Apple and its iPhone business, “A key part of antitrust is whether a company has acted consistently. If a company grew market share and obtained a monopoly by doing things legally that is not enough to be illegal. The company must do bad things to maintain a monopoly if it didn’t do bad things to earn one.”