Does antitrust law apply?
But the bigger legal question is whether the Sherman Antitrust Act applies to exclusive smartphone deals. That law, which was used by the government in its antitrust case against Microsoft, is designed to prevent anticompetitive practices by powerful companies. Several attorneys and analysts have already questioned whether AT&T, or any other single wireless carrier, has abused its power with use of exclusive handset deals. Part of their reasoning is that even if AT&T has the iPhone, competing carriers will come to market with other smartphones that have popular appeal. AT&T, indeed, could be dominant for now with the iPhone, but its overall dominance as a wireless carrier is hard to establish when other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, boast new phones and services. All the major carriers have diverse product and service portfolios that make it hard to pinpoint one as being in such a dominant position that it can abuse its powers, analysts noted. Sprint Nextel’s exclusive deal to se
