Hacker News Reader

Comment by headmelted | Hacker News Reader

You're still missing the point.

Apple owns a mall (iOS). In that mall, Apple owns a book store (iTunes). Amazon also has a book store in the mall (Kindle).

Apple does not want to sell Amazon's books (Kindle format ebooks) in it's store (iTunes). Ok.

Apple decrees that no store in the mall shall sell any books but iTunes books, which only they may sell. Not Ok.

Amazon is free to sell books in their app, they just need to pay a portion of their revenue for the privilege of doing so much like in the mall.

And Apple is forcing everyone to sell in their mall and no other. That's pretty much the point.

There are other malls available, across the world Apple's mall is quite small.

We're not talking about the world. We're talking about the universe of the iPhone.

In the brick-and-mortar world, malls are fungible, and stores that sell the same goods are fungible. The iPhone is not fungible.

We are talking about the universe of mobile devices.

You are; I don't think we are. Spotify certainly isn't, and it may be entirely reasonable to view the world through that lens.

In relative numbers yes, but I wouldn't call short of a billion active devices "quite small".

Still, there is a choice for anyone that wants to sell products.

Anyone that wants to constrain themselves to a single market, needs to accept the rules of focusing on a single market.

Are you really free to do something if it comes with highly unfavorable conditions then?

Do malls take a portion of the revenue generated from the stores? I assumed they just paid rent and kept the money generated.

How malls and stores negotiate rental agreement is very ad-hoc and strategic but yeah it is often directly or indirectly tied to revenue.