Apple is a monopolist and now that the worldwide market for cell phones is shrinking it hates the thought that it is the highest-cost producer dependent on anot

Apple is a monopolist and now that the worldwide market for cell phones is shrinking it hates the thought that it is the highest-cost producer dependent on another monopolist. Qualcomm charges effectively a 4-5% VAT on the end-user price of a product. Qualcomm wanted to give the little guys a break. I worked on radio systems design and my wife worked directly for Irwin Jacobs. The big monopolist just fakring hates that the little guys have a chance. It's why you see Apple screaming louder than everybody ... Apple is struggling to raise prices in everything they do these days. They invented the $1,500 phone. They make phones that more and more cannot be disassembled. They started soldering everything to the motherboards (phones, MacBooks). They now put lock down chips in the phone and the laptop so most of the hardware cannot be swapped out and repaired. They charge $500 to replace the back of a phone when Samsung charges $20. They make defective failure-prone keyboards and keep selling them 3 years after the market began complaining. They took out functionality and raised prices with USB C. We are actually close to "peak apple" if you think about it for just 10 seconds. Growth under Tim Cook (mid-2012 to now) has been one third of growth under Steve Jobs (mid 2007-mid 2012).