Elon Musk picked sides in the high-profile Epic Games v. Apple trial Friday morning, and his sympathies did not appear to lie with the tech giant down the road from Tesla’s headquarters.
Epic had argued, in a three-week trial before a U.S. district judge that ended in May, that Apple’s dominance over its app market is monopolistic.
“Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet,” Musk wrote. “Epic is right.”
Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet. Epic is right.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2021
Musk’s choice to comment on the lawsuit is an unusual one — for most CEOs. But for years, the Tesla chief has taken to Twitter to trade barbs and make spontaneous announcements, and even once to suggest that his company was going private, resulting in penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last year he declared on the social media site that Tesla’s stock price was too high “imo” — shorthand for “in my opinion.”
His statements aren’t limited to Twitter. On Monday, Musk said on Tesla’s earnings call that its “Full Self-Driving” product is currently a “debatable” buy for potential customers, an unusual choice for a chief executive pushing a product to consumers. And during a call last year he broke into a profanity-laced rant over coronavirus shutdown orders.
Musk announced Monday that he would step aside from earnings calls unless he had something important to say.
While Apple has had tension with rival Facebook over advertising policies, Tesla and Apple haven’t publicly feuded.
Apple and Epic Games have been locked in a bitter, widely publicized legal battle for a year and are awaiting a verdict in a lawsuit that could change Apple’s business model.
Epic last year offered users of its popular game “Fortnite” an alternative payment method, violating Apple’s rules and circumventing the 30 percent commission on all digital transactions that take place on iOS, the iPhone’s mobile operating system.
Apple removed “Fortnite” from the App Store in response, and Epic promptly filed suit in federal court, alleging that Apple’s rules and conduct violate U.S. antitrust law. The lawsuit went to trial in May, in what has become a landmark antitrust case taking on the power of Big Tech.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide the case, has yet to deliver a verdict. That could involve ordering Apple to change its business practices, perhaps opening up the iPhone to alternative methods of software distribution and payment processing systems. Whatever the verdict, the case is likely to be appealed and could make its way to the Supreme Court.
Musk’s company has taken after Apple in myriad ways, including by integrating hardware and software and taking a “walled garden” approach to its products that places users into an ecosystem controlled by the company. Musk, however, has been a proponent of the open-source movement and has indicated he plans to open up Tesla’s Supercharger network of electric-vehicle chargers to other automakers.