The year is still young, but so far it hasn’t been auspicious for Apple. A federal court today ruled against the iPhone maker on its latest appeal regarding a blood oxygen monitoring feature in the Apple Watch, almost certainly meaning Apple will disable the feature on the device while it pursues further appeals. Meanwhile, on Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Apple’s appeal of a California ruling relating to the App Store, which means the company must allow developers to offer alternative payment methods in their iOS apps. And more legal troubles may lie ahead: Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Justice Department could sue Apple on antitrust grounds as soon as March.
Let’s not overstate the impact of any of these individual episodes. It’s hard to imagine the absence of the blood oxygen feature will affect sales of the Apple Watch much, if at all, in the near term. And while Apple is now allowing app developers to offer customers an alternative way to pay, the core issue behind that case—Apple’s steep commission—is barely changing. The company has cut its maximum commission by 3 percentage points to 27%, hardly a resounding victory for developers. As one lawyer, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, said, Apple is doing the bare minimum to comply with the legal order. Not only that, but the richest company in tech is trying to get the plaintiff in the case, Epic Games, to cough up $73 million in legal costs.
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