in a sweeping Federal lawsuit on Thursday the Department of Justice and 16 States including New Jersey accused Apple of creating a monopoly in the smartphone industry alleging the tech giant tightened its grip on the market by violating anti-rust laws not by staying ahead of the competition the suit cites specifics like purposely blocking third-party mobile software from its devices so you can't FaceTime or use an Apple Watch with an Android which keeps customers from switching to other providers while paying higher prices the lawsuit filed in Newark is considered the government's most significant challenge to Apple's reach and New Jersey attorney general Matt platkin was tapped to lead the case on behalf of the states he joins me now attorney general Matt platkin thanks so much for your time you know as well as I do that courts have sided largely with apple in previous cases what makes this lawsuit different well I think as attorney general Garland said yesterday this is one of the largest cases ever filed by the Department of Justice and by State's Attorneys General and if you look at the complaint you can see the conduct that Apple has engaged in has excluded other businesses in ways that violate our laws and has stifled Innovation and what that has resulted in is consumers paying more for an inferior product give us an example if you can sure well I mean Apple has limited uh thirdparty apps they don't allow thirdparty app stores on their platform they take extraordinary fees from App developers and from Banks they limit the wallets you can use on their platform tap to pay is only for Apple wallet which is something that's not true on other platforms you can't use cloud-based apps which allow you to do a lot of different things without using up uh the hardware that you have so you don't need the super expensive phone which Apple wants you to buy all of this is laid out in the complaint but the upshot here is their practices over the past two decades have resulted in consumers paying substantially more for their products than they otherwise would have to and if you think about that in 2007 if you take the price of an iPhone in 2017 and injust it for inflation it would cost $450 today when an iPhone now costs over $1,500 this is a private business though yes I mean hasn't the Supreme Court said in the past that private businesses are allowed to deal with other companies as they see fit and set the terms uh that they want to do business uh with them so does that not include apple and how it decides to work with other app developers software Hardware developers well they can't uh operate in a way that excludes businesses that violates our antitrust laws and I think the clearest example that Apple knows well is Microsoft in the 90s when they weren't allowing iTunes and other third party developed uh platforms on the Windows platform and when the Department of Justice and State's Attorneys General across the country filed suit and ultimately won that case where Apple was a witness uh Apple was able to develop the iTunes Store for the windows platform uh iTunes led to the iPod which obviously was a huge success and then the iPhone and now fast forward a couple decades later and Apple has essentially followed the Microsoft playbook in ways that violate our laws and hurt our consumers I think the way you put it yesterday was that apple is using rules uh made by Apple for Apple uh what does the lawsuit seek aside from damages what are you looking to have apple do in just the structure of its Market well the exact steps that Apple will have to take will play out as as we litigate this case but I think there are a number of things Apple could do and has shown in other markets that they can do uh but has chosen not to do that would give consumers more Choice things like allowing third party app stores on their platform allowing what's called super apps where you can do multiple things within one application like send messages and purchase products uh they they restrict those types of apps now on the platform so there's a lot of things they could do uh and ultimately I think it would allow Apple to innovate the same way when Microsoft uh had to allow Apple onto its platform we saw the development of apple and a number of other companies that grew into large uh American leading Enterprises um apple is stifling that type of innovation right now Mr attorney general thank you so much for your time thank you