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Comment by throwawaymath | Hacker News Reader

How can you argue that it's not worth "anywhere near 10%, let alone 30%" if there are so many firms willing to pay it? The idea of the fees is not to cover the costs of doing business, it's to turn a (ideally significant) profit.

It sounds like your expectation is that a company would not charge as much as the market will accept for a unique product. How much it costs to simply handle e.g. payment processing has relatively little to do with it.

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Ideally profits should be incentives for a good service. Instead the profits are a result of the lack of competition because it‘s impossible in iOS‘ case and virtually impossible in Android’s case to compete.

Is that a lack of competition in the actual legal sense of the word? I don't actually know the answer, but my perception is that it's probably not.

Apple does not restrict the ability of another browser to be installed (like Chrome) nor another music service (like Spotify) nor another video service (Amazon). It does charge a high fee for purchases through the App Store platform, but I think reasonable people can disagree about whether or not that's actually anticompetitive.

I think it's incorrect to compare Apple'a high fees to other things that are not app stores, like payment processors. It might be the case that we need more than two mobile operating systems in the market this way Apple and Google have a competitive incentive to reduce their fees. But I think it's fair to mandate a high fee to do things on your operating system if end users and developers will accept it. So far most developers accept it.

> Apple does not restrict the ability of another browser to be installed (like Chrome)

They do not allow you to develop/use any other webkit than the one provided though.

> nor another music service (like Spotify)

Back when I had an iphone, you could not change the default app switches to competing products like spotify and google maps.

> nor another video service (Amazon)

Amazon cannot sell their videos in their app (nor books in kindle) without paying Apple a 30% cut and there is no way users can download an amazon app that allows them to do so because you cannot install software onto IOS devices outside of their app store.

I agree about IOS but it is not hard to download an app for android outside the play store. Amazon has a competing store and fortnite skipped the play store and sells their game straight from the web.

But Fortnite and Amazon are huge. It's almost possible for individual devs or smaller companies to sell apps outside the store. Not technically but logistically. Hence the preceeding "virtually".

Ideal competitive markets allow for little profit. Significant profits are a sign that a market lacks competition. One can certainly not expect a company to voluntarily lower prices based on a value judgement. It requires competition or, in unusual cases, regulation.

>It sounds like your expectation is that a company would not charge as much as the market will accept for a unique product.

Actually I don't have a problem with charging 30%. I just don't think it is worth it. Like Rental, you don't have a choice, unless you don't want to access These customers. I just wish Apple could offer something more, because what they are doing now is rent seeking.

The inverse question is equally interesting: In a monopoly, how do you determine when to put a stop to it?

It's a tough question.

I don't agree with you that Apple or Google are monopolies. I also don't see that what they're doing is anti-competitive.

I expect that will be a pretty controversial opinion, but I'm just being honest.

Oh, I probably sounded identical to a certain common pattern. Don't read too much into it. :)

I don't think they're anti-competitive. But they are monopolies.

http://gsl.mit.edu/media/programs/south-africa-summer-2015/m...

https://i.imgur.com/ooJmwsg.png

Not sure you can say they are willing to pay it, considering the alternative is not being able to provide the application to iOS/Android users.

They are clearly willing to pay it if they pay it. If users buy these devices knowing in advance that it will be infeasible to install software outside of the app store, I don't think it's fair for developers to act entitled to another software distribution channel.

In particular it doesn't seem anticompetitive to me because Apple/Google charge a fee to every business in return for their service, but don't try to stop competitors from being on the service outright.

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