Apple gets sneaky in battle with Epic Games Strategy is to use a long-time collaborator to undermine Epic’s star witness 13 May 2021 - 17:14 Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave Apple argues that it is just one of many competitors in a healthy market for video game purchases. Picture: DADO RUVIC/REUTERS
In its ongoing case against Apple,
Fortnite creator Epic Games is counting on this week’s testimony from its star expert witness David Evans, chair of Global Economics Group, to make its case that Apple is an anticompetitive monopolist over app developers.
Apple has called its own experts to rebut Evans’s views on the market, but with an added personal twist: It called MIT economist Richard Schmalensee, who has authored numerous books and academic papers together with Evans, to accuse Evans of contradicting his own prior research.
A man leaves an Apple store in Beijing in 2019. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) A federal judge continued to press a prominent economist on his theory that Apple forecloses competition in the iOS app distribution market as he took the stand for a second day of questioning in Fortnite game maker Epic’s antitrust battle with the tech titan.
David Evans, chairman of Global Economics Group and Epic’s main economic expert, struggled at times to relay his granular points, even to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
Evans testified that the App Store provides two products: app distribution services and an iOS in-app payment solutions. And he said that Apple is a monopolist that “has been able to increase the price for payment solutions by a significant amount.”
Epic Games’ economic expert testified that Apple restrains competition in its App Store in a closely watched antitrust battle between two tech giants. In his testimony, economist David Evans noted that Apple’s App Store profits are “vastly higher” than those of most online stores.
Customers leave an Apple store on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) The federal judge overseeing the antitrust fight between Apple and Epic Games had a lot of questions for economist David Evans, chairman of Global Economics Group and Epic’s main economic expert, who took the stand Monday to testify that Apple’s restrictions on developers are causing anticompetitive harm in the iOS app distribution market.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Next week, Epic Games and Apple will appear in court for a long-anticipated legal battle. Epic argues that Apple unfairly kicked its hit game
Fortnite off the App Store last year, exercising an illegal monopoly over the ubiquitous iOS platform. Apple claims Epic is trying to break the iOS platform’s vaunted safety and security for its own gain. Both parties have laid out how they expect to win their respective cases, and this week, they’ve provided near-final lists of the people they expect to call for testimony.
Apple and Epic both filed revised tentative witness lists on April 26th. The lists don’t guarantee every witness will be called, and crucially, they don’t tell us