Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for U.S. president has taken a hard line against big tech, and she has Apple in her sights. On Friday she proposed breaking up a number of large tech firms, and the iPhone-maker made the list.
Now she’s shared more details on why she thinks dividing Apple into at least two parts is necessary.
Split App Store from Apple
Warren. in an interview with The Verge , proposed:
Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store. It’s got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time.
The senator isn’t proposing splitting Apple into hardware and software businesses, as her primary complaint about the company seems to be that its software and services have an unfair advantage competing against other software developers in the App Store.
Warren told The Verge:
If you run a platform where others come to sell, then you don’t get to sell your own items on the platform because you have two comparative advantages. One, you’ve sucked up information about every buyer and every seller before you’ve made a decision about what you’re going to sell. And second, you have the capacity — because you run the platform — to prefer your product over anyone else’s product. It gives an enormous comparative advantage to the platform.
A plank of Warren’s campaign
Her comments go beyond idle speculation. Sen. Warren is a presidential candidate, and she said in a blog post published on Friday “My administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition .”
As one of the most valuable and visible companies in the world, it’s inevitable for Apple to get drawn into politics. CEO Tim Cook meets with Pres. Donald Trump several times a year, for example. So it’s not surprising that it gets mentioned in presidential candidates’ stump speeches.
