Exactly, so, not a monopoly in ecommerce. And only a single-digit share of commerce.
And, of course, there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.
And, of course, there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.
Why should the government punish companies because they were able to disrupt incumbents?
Should we also punish Apple because RIM and Palm couldn’t compete?
Should future competitors to [monopolistic entity] be punished because [previous competitors] were unable to effectively compete?
In any case, I don't think punishment is really an apt metaphor for breaking apart a monopoly.
Every company I named was once dominant. Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention.
It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.
> It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.
The criticisms of Microsoft weren't that it was preventing Apple from selling computers; but that it was using it's monopoly in the operating system to prevent competition against its other software.
> Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention.
And if Apple decided Spotify could not be on the App Store, how would Spotify do then? (Nevermind we're ignoring the "Apple tax".)
Spotfy is an example. Plenty of Apps do pay the "Apple tax." I'd get into the complexity of how the "Apple tax" affects Spotify even though it doesn't pay it, but you seem to have already made up your mind about all this regardless of the facts.
And you act as if most revenue from online stores is not coming from in app purchases of consumable goods.
Because retail stores have to provide shelf space with real estate cost, unsold inventory cost, etc. How much is that cost to Apple?
> It was 70% to be distributed in online app stores like the ones that Verizon use to run to distribute J2ME apps.
And it costs 0% to be distributed in a Linux package manager.
Possibly something to do with Verizon having the same sort of app monopoly over its device customers that Apple does.
Because retail stores have to provide shelf space with real estate cost, unsold inventory cost, etc. How much is that cost to Apple?
So now the government should also decide what is a “fair” amount of markup?
And it costs 0% to be distributed in a Linux package manager.
And seeing how little money you can make from Linux users, the value add for distributing packages on Linux makes the price about right....
In which case the lesson is that by charging so much in a competitive market, that business unit failed. Which leads to the real point:
> So now the government should also decide what is a “fair” amount of markup?
It's not a matter of setting prices, it's a matter of having competition. Apple gets 30% because it's the only feasible way to distribute to iOS. If Apple was charging 30% and there was a competing Mozilla App Store for iOS charging 5%, I suspect Apple would lose some business to it. And if some people still think Apple's store is worth 30%, no problem -- let them pay 30% while others pay 5%. But the 5% option should exist.
> And seeing how little money you can make from Linux users, the value add for distributing packages on Linux makes the price about right....
The point is that it shows the cost of providing that service. If Debian can do it at scale for nothing, what is Apple doing that justifies 30%, and where is the option to get just the thing Debian does for free?
There was nothing stopping Mozilla from making a “Firefox phone” and having a fully integrated experience. Well they did try and failed to execute. As did Amazon, Ubuntu, and Facebook.
Apple was nowhere near the behemoth it is today when the iPhone was introduced. A company shouldn’t come under government scrutiny because competitors failed to execute.
If app makers don’t think the trade off is worth it, they are free to only target the other 80% of the phone market.
I guess they think selling loot boxes with Apple taking a 30% cut is worth it. Don’t be mistaken, that is where most money being spent on the App Store is being spent - on in app consumables.
The other major market is subscription to third party services and companies can and do sell those outside of the App Store.
The whole issue is that you shouldn't have to succeed in the phone market before you can operate an app store. Tying the phone to a specific app store is the problem. "Integrated experience" is the argument Microsoft failed to convince with when it tied Internet Explorer to Windows.
> If app makers don’t think the trade off is worth it, they are free to only target the other 80% of the phone market.
In other words, Apple has a monopoly over 20% of the app customers, in the same way that Charter may have a broadband monopoly in 20% of the country even if there are other providers in the other 80%.
Notice that this isn't the same thing as saying that Walmart has a monopoly over its own shelf space, because customers can trivially switch from Walmart to Amazon or vice versa at any time but to buy a $1 app from Amazon or Google Play instead of Apple you would first have to replace your $1000 phone. To reach the same position as Walmart, the issue isn't that they control what's in their own store, it's that there are no competing iOS app stores.
Moreover, the problem with the App Store isn't just that Apple takes 30%, it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.
I can walk into any mobile store and have a choice between dozens of phones. Most people can’t choose their homes internet service provider.
Notice that this isn't the same thing as saying that Walmart has a monopoly over its own shelf space, because customers can trivially switch from Walmart to Amazon or vice versa at any time but to buy a $1 app from Amazon or Google Play instead of Apple you would first have to replace your $1000 phone. To reach the same position as Walmart, the issue isn't that they control what's in their own store, it's that there are no competing iOS app stores.
People can choose whether they want to spend money on an iPhone or an Android phone knowing the trade offs just like people can choose whether to buy an Xbox or PS4.
it's that they can reject your app for entirely opaque reasons without recourse, explicitly including because it competes with one of theirs.
Seeing that there are competing products for everything that Apple sells, this is a boogeymen that doesn’t happen anymore than it happens for the console makers.
You do realize that no software can be sold for consoles without the approval of the console makers - including physical sells.
No, but they can choose their home, which is the relevant analog. If you don't like Charter, just move to another city. If you don't like the Apple App Store, just buy another phone.
If the thing you have to buy to get a choice costs 1000 times more than the thing you're choosing, it's not a real choice.
> People can choose whether they want to spend money on an iPhone or an Android phone knowing the trade offs just like people can choose whether to buy an Xbox or PS4.
"People can choose whether they want to spend money on a house in Charter's service area or Comcast's service area knowing the trade offs..."
And it being no different for consoles only means that the same rules should apply there as well.
> Seeing that there are competing products for everything that Apple sells
What is the competition for Safari then? Notice that "Firefox" on iOS isn't even real Firefox because Apple requires it to use Safari's engine internally.
Also, the App Store is an app.
Yes it was one of the deciding factors when I bought my house was the internet service available.
But if I don’t like Apples policies it’s a lot easier to buy another $500 phone than a $400K house.
What is the competition for Safari then?”
Opera Mini....
Also, the App Store is an app.
Apple “sells” the App Store?
Microsoft is a goddamed convicted monopolist. The conviction significantly changed their internal processes and they were much more careful after that point.
They tried to compete in both the media player, digital music, and phone market and failed.
They are still trying to compete in search.
Yes, they tried to compete, not just buy whoever they could and abuse the rest of the market which means the conviction had the intended effect.
They tried to buy Yahoo.
They were convicted of antitrust violations, sanctions were imposed, and they weren't dominant forever.
Since a key part of Warren's criticism of the past that has led us to the current state of internet giants is that it results from a complete failure to enforce antitrust laws along the way, there is implicitly a contrast with Microsoft where, even if it was fairly light touch in the US due to timely election of an MS-friendly administration, there was enforcement and sanctions.
Microsoft is still just as dominant in the PC operating system market and the desktop productivity market as it was in 1999.
The sanctions were on the way they illegally leveraged that (legally attained) monopoly to monopolize other markets. Something which they've been decidedly less prone to do since. Well, at least for a while, they are now pretty much following the lead of the companies Warren is complaining about and, to the extent the latter are benefitting from lax enforcement, so are they.
You really think they had a strategy meeting and said that their strategy was going to be to always be a strong second?
No, I think they were, at a minimum, more restrained in unlawfully leveraging their existing monopolies to do that thsn they were in the 1990s with the browser, not that they didn't try to dominate those markets.
But as far as being uncompetitive because of a previous business model is the entire premise of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”. It’s not the governments responsibility to protect old business models.
If Facebook were to lock Apple users out of new critically important Instagram filters because they wanted to sell the FacePhone. One could argue that they shouldn't be allowed to abuse their market position in social media to make unfair inroads in the phone market.
IMO, these things are hard to regulate, and most of our walled gardens are surprisingly interoperable :)
This is not true, despite being repeated extremely often. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa