Uneducated answer: it's a natural monopoly. There are economies of scale and any new entrant won't get monopoly profits to justify the required capital and risk.
Why couldn't anyone compete against Bell by building a second phone network?
Why couldn't anyone compete against Bell by building a second phone network?
[1] https://financesonline.com/number-of-smartphone-users-worldw...
Companies have a limited output of the materials needed to make a computer. If Apple tells one of these companies you now have an exclusive relationship with us, or else, what is that company going to do?
Anyway, Apple has a monopoly of platform, which is measured between its own base, rather than as an absolute number compared of what % devices are iPhones.
Apple does have a monopoly on the markets running on all their devices, from apps to media, for ~900 million phones. When Apple doesn't completely own the only available market service to it's hardware (that it exclusively gives itself), it still charges a 30% fee to it's competitors for access to it's markets while actively blocking everyone else.
I'd argue that monopolies should be judged on country and not worldwide. As each country has different iMessage popularity, apps restricted by region, earning power, phone availability, etc.
Their software moat with IOS is everything.
Software itself is innately a hugely monopolistic industry.
IOS is Cisco's router OS. Apple did license it though, to prevent any potential lawsuit...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/06/house-antitrust-subcommittee...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/eff-appeals-apples-mon...
So sure. Not a monopoly. But also not far from a monopoly as you claim.