“We’re on the user’s side in privacy,” Tim Cook says

Jun 6, 2019 07:25 GMT  ·  By

Apple is being accused of using monopoly tactics in the App Store, favoring its own services and increasing revenue with a 30% cut on all sales made by developers, but as far as CEO Tim Cook is concerned, this is not the case.

Cook addressed the claims in an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, pointing out that while being scrutinized by the government is the correct approach, Apple doesn’t “have a dominant position in any market.”

“We are not a monopoly,” Apple’s CEO said.

Focus on privacy

Cook went on to respond to criticism regarding the App Store, which was described by many as one of the weapons the Cupertino-based tech giant uses as part of its monopolistic strategy.

Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently called for Apple to break up the App Store, while a lawsuit filed this week accused the company of violating competition rules by blocking third-party app stores on iOS and forcing developers to publish apps in the App Store.

“I strongly disagree with that. I think some people would argue, if you are selling a good, then you can't have a product that competes with that good. And I think that's part of what is being argued there. But that's an argument that takes you down the path that, Walmart shouldn't be stocking alternative or house brand. And so this is decades of U.S. law here. But I think scrutiny is good, and we'll tell our story to anybody that we need to or wants to hear it. I feel very confident in our position,” Cook said.

Apple’s CEO eventually reiterated the privacy focus of the company, explaining that most of what they do these days is supposed to protect customers.

“You know, we're on the user's side. We're on the user's side in privacy. We're on the user's side in trying to prevent fake news. And so we curate, and we've always done that. We're not an amplifier for fake news or pitting groups against one another or having porn or all this other kind of stuff. This is not what we're about, and we've never been about that,” he said.

Cook also explained that Apple hasn’t yet been hit by the trade war between the United States and China, albeit he admitted that a potential tariff on the iPhone XS could make the device more expensive worldwide.