Consumers are addicted to phones, which has its own problems. But the current prices for devices and services aren't deterring massive adoption and use.
You don't know that. The degree of gatekeeping currently in effect could easily be preventing new applications and we'd never know.
EU hasn't proven any consumer harm but they can write laws for whatever standard so that is why they did, because existing antitrust laws require showing consumer harm.
I believe the "consumer harm" standard as a legal threshold for regulatory intervention is primarily applicable in the US, where it is extremely narrowly construed. I would argue Apple's conduct actually does meet the "consumer harm" standard even for the US but that will take years to sort out. Apple's conduct also arguably runs afoul of existing EU laws, they most likely have decided they need more firepower in the form of thresholds that are being clearly violated and larger potential fines.
Anybody who can't see this is a mercantilist move to weaken foreign companies, specifically US companies, for the benefit of EU companies are in denial.
Counterpoint, the fact that it's easy to see a mercantilist motivation doesn't argue in the least against increased tech antitrust enforcement. The most you can hope to achieve with that argument is that they're doing the right thing for the wrong reason, to which the only rebuttal we need is "so what, it's still the right thing".
My position is that a step up in tech antitrust enforcement has been necessary for years globally, including in the US. If the mercantilist motivation provided the extra nudge for the EU to get serious before the US, that's actually fine. We might make similar observations about other recent regulatory interventions like China being the first to ground the 737 MAX. You can easily accuse China of having a mercantilist motivation contributing to that since Comac is developing a 737 competitor, and you'd probably be right, but the grounding was nevertheless the right thing to do. Similarly the EU may be a few steps closer to the threshold for action because of such motivations, but that doesn't argue in the least against their correctness. Rather there is a bias to inaction among regulators that means intervention is almost invariably too little too late, and even nakedly self-serving motivations still don't provide as much correction as is warranted.
If an EU company worth only $70 billion in market cap decided to engage in anticompetitive and abusive practices, they can't be prosecuted under this law.
Yet there's a substantial body of existing law that already covers the EU, and enforcement happens within the EU against EU-based companies, so it's not like this is purely used in an offensive capacity. It's done primarily to keep EU markets healthy. The fact a new law is being advanced seems to me like it has more to do with tech being ahead of regulators in a lot of ways more than anything else.
