Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners says Apple is acting like a ‘dumb monopolist’ [Video]

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In a recent interview on Bloomberg Television, Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners discussed why he thought Apple is beginning to act like a “dumb monopolist.” While noting Apple is “the most amazing thing I’ve seen in 30 years of covering the tech industry,” McNamee said the company’s anti-competitive nature can be witnessed in recent retail layoffs and its effort to consciously slow down HTML5 web app development on its platforms. He also talked about the iPhone 5, claiming Apple is “increasingly dependent just on the software for their retention because the hardware’s not that cool.” Other topics of conversation included Google, Yahoo, and Zuckerberg post-IPO. Check out the full interview in the video above.

“And so when I look at Apple today, I see them doing crazy things like they laid off a ton of people who worked in the Apple Stores. The retail experience went down the toilet the next day, to the point where there was this huge backlash and they were forced to rehire some of the people. And I’m sitting there going, excuse me? Why are you trying to cut costs? You’re the highest margin hardware business in the last 25 years. What exactly is wrong with your model? And to me, I look at Apple and I go, as a shareholder, it’s an amazing thing. There’s nothing competitive with them at all today, but…they’re already doing the things you would expect a dumb monopolist to do.”