The headline is strange. The DOJ sued for money and Google just straight up gave them the money they could have won upfront. That's not a "pay off"; it's literally what they asked for. It's a win for the DOJ. Google's argument against a jury trial also seems on solid ground. The right to a trial by jury is meant as a protection for Americans; the government itself doesn't have the right to demand a jury. If the defendant thinks the legal issues in the case are too arcane and a judge is more likely to get it right (and get it right faster, which is cheaper), that's their prerogative.
kirklennon
joined 1 year ago
They’ve used the same segments for a long time and presumably maintain them for consistency, so I think it really just tells us that they used to sell very little there. India, in particular, has been a large growth market for Apple in the past couple of years, but is still just thrown in with “Europe.”
The EU is only one chunk of Apple’s “Europe” segment, which is defined as “European countries, as well as India, the Middle East and Africa.”
You're leaving out the most import part. Class members are:
Individual persons who are United States residents and who own or owned an Apple iPhone 7 or 7 Plus between September 16, 2016 and January 3, 2023, and reported to Apple in the United States issues reflected in Apple’s records as Sound-Speaker, Sound-Microphone, Sound – Receiver, Unexpected Restart / Shutdown, or Power On – Device Unresponsive
Based on the amount of money allocated for the settlement, the class members represent significantly less than 1% of iPhone 7 owners.
A long exposure allows more of the light to be captured but that’s not the reason for the color discrepancy. They really are as colorful as they appear in photos but human night vision is primarily black and white. We just don’t see a lot of color unless it’s sufficiently bright and since auroras are still quite dim in absolute terms, our eyes aren’t capable of recognizing the full intensity of the color.
The main reason sales fell this year compared to the year-ago quarter is because the quarter before that Apple wasn't able to keep up with iPhone 14 demand leading to shortages and depleted channel inventory. The following quarter they were able to meet demand and replenish the sales channel leading a boosted year-ago quarter that was $5 billion bigger than it really should have been. Apple didn't have the same production shortages for the 15 launch. It makes this quarter they just reported look like a big decline but that's not really the whole story.
I think it's a privately-owned, profit-focused endeavor that is nevertheless beholden to the Chinese government and which the government wants to take as much advantage of as possible. Deep down, I'm certain that their sole goal is to make as much money for themselves as they possibly can. If they also need to exfiltrate some data and send it to the CCP, that's just a necessary business expense.
This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.
To quote the article again, "The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge." Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn't in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It's likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven't been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn't bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it's still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it's just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
TikTok's daily active users in the U.S. is also just about 5% of ByteDance's DAUs worldwide, said one of the sources.
So much drama in the US over this but it's apparently merely a money-losing afterthought for its owner.
I think it's pretty wild that criticizing something as ill-conceived, arbitrary, and protectionist government overreach will get you labeled as a fascist by some people.
I agree that it seems like inconsistent thinking though. (EU vs China)
The EU is ostensibly capitalist democracies. Publicly criticizing arbitrary and ill-conceived regulations, that can perhaps be improved, is useful. China makes no pretense about being a free country and I think the moral calculus is rather simple: are Chinese citizens better off with Apple there, doing the bare minimum to comply with Chinese law, or with Apple taking the "principled" stand of leaving?
China banned Signal and WhatsApp but has not banned iMessage. If you want secure end-to-end encrypted messaging, iPhones offer that built right in. Apple could leave, but the inevitable result of that is less privacy for Chinese citizens. It's a binary choice. Apple can't make China free, but they can at least offer services without bending over backwards to go above and beyond the CCP's demands, as Chinese companies do.
I think Apple's position is quite consistent: it tries to change the things it can change, fights the things it can fight, and does the bare minimum to comply with things that it doesn't want to but must.
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The DOJ can really only ask for treble damages. If Google paid ~$3 million, that's realistically as good as the DOJ was going to get. It sounds like the initial estimates were just way off. Nobody should be shocked that the inept antitrust division screwed up again. They're going after big, buzz-worthy names without the facts or law to actually back it up.