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Comment by prklmn | Hacker News Reader

I think this is similar to grocery store brands. Do you think that grocery stores should not be allowed to charge name brands for shelf space because they are competing against store owned private label brands?

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I regularly shop at three different grocery chain stores. It's way easier for customers to switch between them compared to being locked into the Apple app store.

You’re right about the ease of switching. I think buying a wholesale club membership card is more analogous. You could buy a Costco card and a sam’s club card if you wanted, but there’s likely not many people who do. People actually prefer the shopping process at Costco for example, and they pay a yearly fee for it, just as people like the shopping/app purchasing experience on an iPhone, and they paid a substantial amount of money for the phone.

Nobody is being forced to subscribe to Spotify through the App Store. It's very easy to visit spotify.com and subscribe to Spotify Premium.

>Nobody is being forced to use Internet Explorer through Windows. It's very easy to visit Netscape.com and download Netscape Navigator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

At a time when Windows had something like a 90% desktop OS market share. iOS never had more than 30% mobile market share.

100% of iPhone users use iOS doesn't matter what the total smartphone use percentage is. It was the same when railway Barron's started capturing the other markets when they owned the railways each railway barron owned their own track and people had alternate routes

And 100% of Spotify customers use Spotify. Should artists therefore be able to dictate their own terms to Spotify?

Sure. But it is still easy to change phones.

You can buy/sell it on eBay. Or next upgrade cycle change brands.

Change phones and then lose literally every purchase you made via Apple. That seems to be the definition of vendor lock in.

I'm not fully aware about how Google Play Store purchases work, but isn't it the same there if you switch between iOS and Android or vice versa?

The sale of apps basically died years ago. Most of the revenue from apps is either coming from in app purchases of consumables or subscription service that are cross platform.

Music that you bought from iTunes has been DRM free for ages.

Most movies purchased from iTunes are transferable to Google Play, Amazon Video and Vudu vis the Movies Anywhere app.

If there were only two grocery store chains in the entire world, and no other way for CPG companies to sell to consumers, I think it would be quite similar indeed.

That's a good argument, and I've actually discussed that issue in the past wrt grocery stores. Those grocery store brands seem to be good for consumers, but bad for a world where people can start successful companies and work for themselves. Maybe its just more efficient to have one giant megacorp make and sell every single thing, but I'd be willing to spend a bit extra so all my self employed friends wouldn't ever be forced to get 'real' jobs

edit: typo

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