When Apple Inc opened the App Store in July 2008, it was a US$155bil company selling 12 million iPhones a year. It’s now a nearly US$2 trillion (RM8.37 trillion) company that sells more than 200 million iPhones annually. In the time it took you to read those two sentences, Apple sold 60 handsets.
While the world’s most valuable company has changed, the rules by which it governs the App Store have not. It’s like a 120lbs (54.4kg) Great Dane that still thinks it’s a puppy. It has failed to adapt to the outsized role it plays in the smartphone market. A dispute with the makers of the popular Fortnite game app – alongside new Apple antitrust probes by the European Union and the US Department of Justice – brings that failure into the spotlight.