What if Apple protests and just disables their store in MT? It would only impact at _most_ 500k people (population 1mm at 50% market share, not accounting for demographics)
A huge number of angry Montanians who might vote their representatives out, but a rounding error for Apple.
If Apple did do this to help a foreign company (or any company), it would probably fall afoul of the law: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
> A firm's refusal to deal with any other person or company is lawful so long as the refusal is not the product of an anticompetitive agreement with other firms or part of a predatory or exclusionary strategy to acquire or maintain a monopoly. (emphasis mine)
IANAL, so I'm sure there are other laws I am not aware of that would squelch such a move.
Because then every state, province territory, etc., in the world will have an excuse. Since there are App Store users everywhere.
It's a lot cheaper to code geographic controls (that they already have for national-level jurisdictions) than to only temporarily boycott even only 100k paying App store customers.
There's a reason why no company has ever successfully done such a thing for any consumer product.
If phone users turn off their GPS location feature Apple can't be held accountable.
They will never shut down their store because of TikTok.
And some people might protest but everyone else will quietly switch to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
I'm not convinced Apple or Google want to be in the business of state governments telling them what apps they can and can't sell. Although I do concede that they do this at the country level, so what's one more level of geo-restriction? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯