Apple’s move to ditch Beeper, the app that brought iMessage to Android users, already caught the attention of US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who called out the tech giant for anti-competitive behavior. Now, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Apple’s “potentially anticompetitive treatment of the Beeper Mini messaging app,” noting that “interoperability and interconnections have long been key drivers of competition and choice of consumers in communications services. “
The letter is addressed to Assistant US Attorney General Kanter and is signed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Mike Lee, Representative Jerry Nadler and Representative Ken Buck. In it, they note that the Commerce Department had earlier this year described Apple as a “gatekeeper” with a “monopolistic position” in the mobile app ecosystem. They also reported to Beeper’s CEO Eric Migikowskihis testimony in December 2015 before the Subcommittee on Competition, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he expressed concern that “dominant messaging services would use their position to impose barriers to interoperability ” and they would block Beeper from working.
“Given Apple’s recent actions, this concern seems prescient,” the letter said. Due to the anti-competitive nature of Apple’s actions, lawmakers referred the matter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division for further investigation.
The letter is the latest in a series of battles between startup Beeper and Apple.
Earlier this month, Beeper debuted an app called Beeper Mini that leveraged the new technology to bring support for blue-bubble iMessage conversations to Android users. The startup’s older app, an aggregator of multiple messaging services, was subsequently renamed Beeper Cloud while development of Beeper Mini continued with the goal of eventually moving all users to the newer app.
Initially, Beeper charged users $1.99 per month to access Beeper Mini, but later dropped the price to free as Apple began cutting off Beeper’s ability to reliably transmit messages. Although the company was able to obtain a fix, Apple once again targeted Beeper users by intentionally blocking messages for about 5 percent of users, the company said.
Apple argued that Beeper’s techniques “posed significant risks to users’ security and privacy, including the potential to expose metadata and enable spam, spam, and phishing attacks,” and so it took “steps to protect” users. its users.
Founder and CEO of Beeper, Eric Migikowski, who previously founded the Pebble smartwatch, challenged Apple to agree to an independent third-party security audit of Beeper’s app so it could prove the app maintained end-to-end encryption, as Beeper promised. Apple has yet to take him up on that offer.
The Beeper Mini app currently works by allowing users to authenticate with their Apple ID and will remain free until further notice given the possibility of Apple interfering.
“Very strong message from bipartisan lawmakers in the House and Senate. Lots more to come this week.” said Migicovsky, in a post on X concerning the letter, first mentioned by CBS Mornings in a section about the Beeper app.
