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Comment by nebabyte | Hacker News Reader

I continue to be amazed that apple is not considered as having a monopoly on "stores for apple devices".

These are exactly the kind of archaic requirements that would be a nonstarter or otherwise kill market support for a store given any actual competition.

Instead, they are able to leverage it to try and push their 'approved' languages and developer environments - furthering anticompetitive lock-in.

Apple making money from selling devices (or even distributing "at a loss" devices which they benefit from having exist so they can better act as software vendors) and them making money from their store are two separate revenue streams, after all.

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"products made by one brand" isn't a category of products. If they're the only brand that makes products for a particular category, then they're a monopoly, but you cannot simply define a category as "stuff made by that company", because by that logic, every company is a monopoly on stuff made by them.

Actually, a makers own products are a distinct market for antitrust purposes if people empirically don't substitute out of it, as shown by the producer having market (pricing) power.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's true for Apple for some of its offerings.

It's not. The only product you could even try to make the argument for is the iPhone, but the generally-accepted categorization here is that iPhone and Android phones (and Windows phones) are part of the same category, which makes sense because people absolutely do switch between them.

Actually I have a better argument against this than my other.

No, "products from brand A" is never a category. However, a company may create a brand new market with a product, and they may be the only company with a product in that market for a while. But that still doesn't mean the category is "products by that company", it just means it's whatever new category was created from the product.

For example, the iPhone arguably created a new category of smartphones. But competitors quickly introduced their own products in this same category (e.g. Android).

I imagine it would be easier to accept your assertion of anti-competitive behavior if it weren't trivial to completely ignore Apple for your phone needs, or if there were some sort of Constitutional right guaranteeing you the Apple phone of your dreams

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