So Apple is welcome to divest AirPods into a separate company and problem solved. Who knows, "AirPods Inc" may discover there are a great many phone brands out there that could use a nice integration and extra features. Win for consumers.
I agree from a business perspective, those headphones were all brand and a bad fit for apple from a quality perspective. Do we really need regulators deciding when businesses are wasting their money?
The integration works so well because airpods and apple phones use a protocol that isn't bluetooth, their "Magic protocol". You have to own the whole stack to make it work so well.