Apple’s App Store and Antitrust | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s App Store and Antitrust

loganleger.com

16 pointslleger17 comments

The problem with this analysis is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones, mobile OS's or app stores, any more than Nieman Marcus has a monopoly on department stores. If customers don't like the selection, they have choice for all three. The same is true for developers.

If this ever does come to be investigated, it will be interesting to see what Google's position is. Will they claim they can't compete?

True — however that doesn't stop the DOJ from initiating an investigation or other third parties from requesting one. I think that Apple wants to avoid that kind of investigation. In any case: there are problems with the App Store, and I think that's the issue at hand here.

>Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones, mobile OS's or app stores

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-...

Really?

While there are alternatives, their usage is infinitesimal in comparison to the % sold through apple.

Last I checked, Apple had something like a 20% share of the market for the platforms on which those apps run. Their phone has a feature, which all other app phones share, that happens to get used far more than its competition. That doesn't make Apple a monopolist.

They sell 20% of the phones.

They sell near 100% of all apps for all phones. The people who buy apps on Android, Blackberry, Simbian and WinMo are vastly dwarfed on the sales of apps for the Apple AppStore.

They do not have a monopoly in phones, but in App sales.

Explain to me how you can have a monopoly in app sales when you own only 20% of the app-running platforms (and you have competitors with a significantly larger share). How can you distort the market from that vantage point? If you abuse customers, they simply go to BlackBerry or Android.

Most people who own android, blackberry and winmo, don't buy any apps. Most people who have the iPhone, buy 27 (the actual number, the mean as of April 25, 2009).

That's how. A huge percentage of android apps are free, and many people don't get you can install things on blackberry and winmo.

Of course, this is hoping for democracy in a system that doesn’t yet require such freedom

Surely nobody expects "democracy" from a privately owned app store. Clarity and good faith, yes. Agreements should be explicit and transparent between the involved parties, and that is really the relationship developers have with the app store, not democratic rule.

OK: democracy was the wrong word to use here. However, the point still remains and you've quite nailed it — there needs to be clarity between Apple and the developers of their platform.

Maybe not from a privately owned app store, but since Apple doesn't allow any other way to put software onto the devices any argument about the app store automatically translates to an argument about the whole iOS platform. I think once you start talking about a "platform" expectations about equality, fair treatment and freedom from persecution by the platform owner are very normal expectations. I guess the question is whether iOS is actually worthy of being called a "platform" in this sense - perhaps it is not.

Clear and cogent. A little to trusting of the DOJ's getting it right, now or at some point in the future. As memory serves, when they took on Microsoft, Andrew Schulman had three 'Undocumented' books on the shelves, any one of which would have done the job for them.

Thanks for the compliment. You're probably right about the DOJ, but I like to stay optimistic when it comes to our system of justice.

> For example, iBooks provides a slider UI element to control the brightness level. This puts Apple in an unfair competitive position because other apps — such as the Kindle or even non-competing apps such as Instapaper2 — can’t offer this functionality to their users.

GoodReader has a brightness control built in. Are they not supposed to? Why not?

The point is that the API Apple used to implement it isn't available to developers. GoodReader likely implemented a workaround, such as the one Instapaper has. It's not a native element, however.

I think my Instapaper and Kindle iPad app are broken.. they both have brightness sliders. Where can I buy the anti-competitive versions of these apps?

The point wasn't that those apps _don't_ have this functionality builtin, but rather that it's not an available API to developers. Marco had to implement a workaround in order to offer the brightness slider in Instapaper. It works, but it's not native functionality.

But those were just examples of a macro issue, so I really wouldn't focus on that too much.

I understand what you're saying. I read your reply after I had already posted. But Honestly iBooks is doing it wrong anyway.. It seems like it was put in as a hack, because it changes the systems brightness permanently whereas instapaper and kindle seem to be based on a percentage of the current system brightness. Which would make sense if it's a layer that they're changing the transparency of. I don't, however, think this is malicious in its intent, though it is a bit unfair. Same with the lock screen stuff. It is probably safe to say that this is something Apple will open to developers eventually... after they're done playing.

Apple should just flag apps that use private API's and call them out for it when the user upgrades the OS in an alert dialogue-like fashion when they launch the app (or on the applications iTunes page). "This app is using private API's and may not function properly with your current firmware." Instead of rejection. But it's probably easier to reject than to publish a "purchase at your own risk" disclaimer. All that's going to do is get a lot of people to not purchase your application.

The AppStore acceptance and rejection policys, though, should get fully investigated. I would like to get into iOS development, but trusting my livelihood on such a seemingly fickle process makes me really nervous.

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