An Illustration of Apple’s Antitrust Situation

Last week Apple became the latest subject of a comprehensive antitrust lawsuit, as the US Department of Justice accused it of abusing its market dominance to limit consumer choice. There are many allegations, and they will take a long time to digest.

We can look at one element right away. We have data on two important Apple accessory products, AirPods (wireless Bluetooth earbuds) and Apple Watch. Looking at that data, it appears that Apple dominates sales of those smartphone accessories for Apple iPhone buyers, especially when compared to accessory choices of Android smartphone buyers. (For this analysis we use our quarterly survey of all US smartphone customers.)

Among Bluetooth headsets, AirPods has the dominant share of iPhone buyers. Almost two-thirds of iPhone buyers with a Bluetooth headset own AirPods, while Samsung, the leading Android brand, accounts for less than 20% of Android smartphone buyers’ Bluetooth headsets (Chart 1).