It isn't anti-competitive to not open up your hardware and software security stack to any other OEMs who wander by. You can simply just buy a competitor's product, for less money even.
Turns out that (fairly applied) antitrust doesn't care how much it money it costs an incumbent company to begin allowing competitors
- Is this stifling competition?
- Is that harming consumers?
Per the contents of the blog post, yes this is absolutely stifling competition given that Pebble won't be able to provide the same features/experience as the Apple watch. This directly hurts Pebble which prevents them from competing.
As for how much that hurts consumers, the answer is not a clear "yes". The iOS market share is ~60% in the US and I don't think the majority of those folks wear or are interested in wearing any kind of watch, smart or not.
However, if Apple keeps this up they're absolutely going to go the way of Ma Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T_(1982) and the eventual Telecommunication Act of 1996 which forced incumbent providers to interconnect with folks who would ostensibly be their competition.
This is incredibly vaguely defined here. Saying that apple stifles smart watch competition by not actively working to make iphone more interoperable with non apple smart watches is ridiculous. You'd never say that a car company is stiffing competition by making it hard to install a new engine, or mount after market add-ons.
People have such a confusing hate-boner for apple. Just buy an android phone.
Any smart watch vendor should be able to call up Apple and make their own watch which is equally privileged to Apple's. And the requirements to the vendor to do so needs to be not so onerous as to be an effective ban.