> I think Apple should be taken to court over that matter. Safari on iOS is the same as IE on Windows in the early noughts.
The law you’re referring to is “using a monopoly in one area to gain an advantage in another.” Crucial word being: monopoly. iOS is not a monopoly in the mobile market. Windows had 300 000% of the market, iOS has around… 20% worldwide? Let’s be generous and double it to 40%: still a far cry from a monopoly.
Whether iOS is a legal monopoly does not depend on market share in a common descriptive market segment, but instead in whether it in fact has market (pricing) power; that is, an antitrust market is in effect defined by where substitution actually occurs with price changes, not on how media/analysts describe markets based on product characteristics.
> Although in this particular case: seems like it would still not qualify iOS as a monopoly?
Maybe. Market / pricing power is not sinple to assess, and I'm not sure if device / OS side or the application distribution side is most relevant to the browser bundling decision. I'd say it' seems to me more likely that the Apple has pricing power in the App Store that in iOS devices (it doesn't sell iOS as such, so that's probably not the thing to look at), and either device or app store market power, if it exists, could be leveraged against competing browsers with the policies restricting them.)
IANAL, but: iOS is not a monopoly, but it has a dominant position, especially in US (over or close to 50% market share). For tablets their market share is even bigger than that. That should be enough to at least consider some actions, on some level, by someone. Google and Mozilla could sue, I guess? On the other hand, Apple making it a security issue could be a solid defense in court, maybe that's why no one bothers.
The law you’re referring to is “using a monopoly in one area to gain an advantage in another.” Crucial word being: monopoly. iOS is not a monopoly in the mobile market. Windows had 300 000% of the market, iOS has around… 20% worldwide? Let’s be generous and double it to 40%: still a far cry from a monopoly.