Schiller,
who has spent three decades at the iPhone maker, is expected to spend more than
10 hours on the witness stand in federal court in Oakland, California,
rebutting Epic Games' allegations that Apple has monopoly over mobile
developers that it abuses by requiring them to use its in-app payments system
and pay commissions.
Over the past two weeks, Epic Games' executives and expert
witnesses argued that Apple has such a strong lock on customers that the
world's more than 1 billion iPhone owners constitute their own separate market
over which Apple exercises strict control. Apple and its experts have framed it
differently, arguing that Epic Games' complaints are related to video game
transactions, a market where Apple charges a similar commission to Microsoft
Corp.'s Xbox and Sony Group Corp.'s Playstation.
But as the trial enters its final week, Schiller is shifting
to the second layer of Apple's defense: That the controls it imposes on
developers are necessary to make the iPhone more private and secure, which has
in turn built consumer trust and expanded the market for mobile apps.
Legal experts say that is important because even if Judge
Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers finds that some of Apple's rules have anticompetitive
effects, she could rule that those effects are outweighed by benefits to
consumers overall.
On the stand on Monday, Schiller testified that the iPhone
originally did not come with any third-party apps because Apple executives felt
they had no time to create a secure system for third-party developers to write
them. But once the phone went on sale, developers soon started
"jailbreaking" devices to put software on them, and Apple rushed to
create a formal system, which later became the App Store, for third-party
software.
"We were very concerned this could create unreliable,
unstable devices," Schiller said of the jailbreaking phenomenon.
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