In Antitrust Trial, Tim Cook Argues Apple Doesn’t Hurt App Makers

In a major moment in Apple’s efforts to fend off growing scrutiny of its power, Tim Cook took the stand in a trial for the first time as Apple’s chief executive and defended his business from accusations that it hurt app makers to expand its profits. He friendly questions from an Apple lawyer in its trial against Epic Games, creator of the popular game Fortnite. Epic is suing Apple for, in Epic’s view, creating and maintaining a monopoly with its App Store. For just over an hour, the Apple lawyer led Cook through a number of different areas of scrutiny that Apple had faced, enabling him to present Apple’s explanation on why it did business a certain way — and why it wasn’t harming developers. He testified that Apple faced lots of competition, that it invested considerably in the App Store to protect users, and that it had lowered its app-store fees for many developers. One longer portion of his testimony focused on the profitability of the App Store. An expert witness for Epic had estimated that Apple’s profit margin on the App Store was roughly 80 percent. Cook said that was wrong. He said that the App Store was profitable, but that Apple hadn’t tried to determine precisely how profitable, in part because it would be difficult based on how Apple structured its costs.