Whilst it seems good to break up this market, it also was rather interesting to see Apple whinge about monopolist market behaviour. Pot calling the kettle black; how very hypocritical.
Regardless, their behaviour with their own Dev relations is very much like what they're accusing Qualcomm of.
They also refuse to permit their customers to run apps not approved by Apple on the phones they have bought. That's the monopoly.
and they still sign your apps, they just do it automatically, i think.
That’s not a monopoly. That’s them exercising control over their own property.
What’s the rationale to treat Apple’s digital store different than Apple’s physical store?
Apple demands that all web browsing is done via Safari on IOS as I understand it.
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....
End of story.
So I guess if someone can prove AAPL's dominance in "premium" PC, education, or some niche subgroup in PC market, it too can be in trouble.
If Apple used its dominance in some niche subgroup PC market to force buyers to pay a percentage of the total cost of all USB-C devices they buy, including non-Apple devices, to Apple to pay for Apple's patents related to USB-C. And if those buyers were companies like Best Buy that needed to be able to buy Apple devices or else lose access to over half their market. And if Apple refused to sell buyers any devices unless they agreed to those terms. And if Apple promised during standardization of USB-C to offer licenses to said patents on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms. Then that analogy might hold a little water.
Chrome uses WebKit because Google would rather use a WebKit/JSC engine than a slow Blink/V8 engine - especially since Blink is a WebKit fork.
They can’t stop you from walking over to Burger King.
Luckily, oven technology doesn't really make that business model feasible so GE doesn't try to do it. But I think there are reasons for antitrust authorities to take a careful look at the behavior of companies that do have this kind of power over their customers.
Plus, monopolies aren’t illegal, using them anti-competitively is. So the analogy would be GE buying or putting out of business all the other oven makers, then saying you can only cook GE food in a GE oven.
Not necessarily declared a monopoly yet, but also not declared not one.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617727/apple-v-pepper-a...
The app store paid out $34bn to devs last year, so a very simple and probably naive calculation of 34/.7*.3 tells me they pocketed around ~$14.5bn in revenue from a total of $48.5bn. (source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/developer-apos-34-billion-ear... )
That really ought to be big enough a pot to warrant my drawing the parallel.
Furthermore,
- They have absolute control and will shut down things whenever they want, such as parental control apps - https://www.macworld.com/article/3391361/apple-privacy-paren... .
- They claim you may install alternative apps, yet you may not set them as default handlers to replace Apple's native ones- https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644045/apple-defends-ap...
- They're playing hardball with Spotify, who are also using the word "monopoly": https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18530894/apple-music-monop...
Do you think parents were aware of that? Are you okay with that? If you want to control your child’s phone, you are free to use MDM software where you control provisioning and the profiles.
Apple says nobody can run apps on their phone without handing them a 30% cut. No side-loading, no other stores, nothing. There is very obviously a market for apps that Apple controls completely. Just because there are other app stores for other phones does not mean Apple doesn't have control over the entire market for iPhone apps. Markets can be narrowly defined in anti-trust law. Apple is fleecing iPhone users for that 30%.
I don't think there's a good parallel case for this. DRM'd Keurig cups are the closest thing I could think of, but that never went to court that I know of. The case will be interesting: can you create a secondary market that you exert total control over? Can I bar anyone else from selling apps for my phone?
Personally, I don't think Apple should be able to do what they are doing and I hope they lose. It would be a win for consumer rights and free market principles.
The judge essentially paused the case for four years while he ruled on a motion (which is ridiculous) so it's been quite slow. But I'm still watching it...
I doubt one has ever been defined as narrowly as a single product. The differences between an iPhone and an Android phone are functionally so minimal as to be irrelevant.
Actually, QCOM's antitrust case is exactly that: QCOM's dominance in one or two particular markets (or product), in this case, the CDMA and "premium" (aka, LTE) modems.
If you define the market to be a single company’s offerings, when there are other companies that make similar products (Android and the Android App Store) then the concept of monopoly has become a tautology.
The problem some people are having goes back to the concept of the walled garden in the first place and general purpose compute devices.
Apple does not have a responsibility to provide general purpose computing smartphones that can run any software you want. If Congress wants to pass a law saying that they do, then fine, but it seems quite to stretch to claim that anti-trust law is designed for that.
False. You can pay for an app/service via the internet (side-pay). The app can be free on the app store. This is what Netflix does. Is it a bit of a hassle? Sure. This is the only part that has an optics problem even though it probably meets any legal thresholds. I do think Apple will get some pressure to make this process easier and that change will happen. Once that is done, there will be even less of an argument here.
From the consumer perspective, if one doesn't like the app store, buy a different brand of phone. There is no monopoly here from a legal or functional perspective.
Has Apple's so called monopoly reduced consumer app selection or pricing? Absolutely not. High quality software has never been more affordable and never has the selection been so incredible. It will be rather easy for Apple to argue that the app store is a net positive for consumers.
For the vast number of non HN users, the app store is a huge win. The whole morass of app selection, installation, update, and developer trust has been solved by the app store. If you are looking for harm to anyone other than the minuscule number of users that care about side loading, it just isn't there. Has everyone forgotten what software purchase, installation, and maintenance looked like a decade ago? What a mess. Fleecing is not the right word for something that has made consumers lives simpler in so many ways.
Some readers of HN might not like Apple's approach, but that doesn't make it illegal. There is just not a way to show substantial (any) harm to consumers. As I said, I think they will probably improve the side-pay options to improve their PR optics and that will be end of it.
That is not how monopolies are defined. Apple says all apps for the iPhone must be signed by them and they must collect 30% of sales and in-app-purchases. The fact that they run an "App Store" means there is a market for iPhone apps. They control the market for iPhone apps. I don't know how to make that any clearer. The fact that Android exists does not change anything about the market for iPhone apps.
However, side-pay will be a very interesting defense. I haven't really considered that enough to speak on it.
Also, while it is true that Apple is controlling the marketplace for iOS apps, it does not control the market for smart phone apps in general. There is a good chance that that is sufficient for the courts to find no monopoly. As many of others have pointed out, there are many, many examples of narrowly defined monopolies. With a different definition, there is no monopoly.
Of course, none of us know what the courts and I get your concern. My point is that the simple control of a marketplace (created by Apple) for a specific product is not a sufficient condition for court action. The benefits to consumers could easily outweigh any concerns about control. Time (years) will tell.
Here is an interesting essay on press (public) perception of monopolies vs antitrust laws:
https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/winter-2019/two-systems-be...
I feel like the fact that only Apple makes iOS devices is what's confusing people.
Suppose that Tesla is the only company that makes electric cars and also the only company that has any electric car charging ports. (This is a hypothetical; in practice other companies offer both electric cars and charging ports.)
They don't have a monopoly on cars -- you can go buy a Volkswagen diesel if you like, and "electric cars" isn't necessarily a separate market than "cars" at the time of purchase. But once you have an electric car, they do have a monopoly on charging ports, which is a separate market because you can't run your electric car on petroleum.
This is easier to see if you add another electric car company but not another electric car charging company. So you go buy your Nissan Leaf but you still have to use a Tesla charging port with it. Clearly a monopoly on charging ports. But still the exact same charging port monopoly when they're the only company making electric cars.
You can have a monopoly on iOS app stores even if you're the only company that makes iOS devices. Having fewer competitors in the other market doesn't make you less of a monopoly. Even the fact that they compete there at all -- if Amazon was the only company with an iOS app store, they would have a monopoly on iOS app distribution even if they don't even make iOS devices.
If you start declaring that the market is the specific store or product, then literally every single product and service is a monopoly begging for state intervention. Can I sue Netflix because as the monopoly holder of the Netflix network they refuse to carry my home made videos? Is Spotify abusing their monopoly over Spotify by refusing to carry my karaoke? Should I be able to sue them in order to bend them to my will?
Of course not. That’s patently ridiculous.
A major purpose of brnad marketing is to create such pocket markets.
Aside from being extremely silly, under this formulation Rolls Royce might be a monopoly, it lacks factual backing. There are plenty of android offerings that overlap Apple offerings in price, including the Pixel 3 and most of the Galaxy S10 series. If your point is that someone willing to spend $1k on a smart phone has no other choice other than to buy Apple, the $1k+ Galaxy S10+ would like to have a word with you.
If your point instead is that any brand that builds up a “pocket market” via good products and marketing is an abusive monopoly that just be stopped, then you’re signing up basically every top company in the every market segment for stringent antitrust enforcement, which is so broad a definition as to be useless. You can’t sue Nike as a monopoly because they’ve built up their own fan base and “pocket market”.
Nope. My point to is neither “there are no high priced smart phones” (there are) not “it’s a monopoly” (I have no position on that question). You should be able to tell that because I say nothing similar to either of those anywhere in the post you are responding to.
My point is that the existence of other players in a particular popular framing of what the market is has very little to do with the anti-trust definition of “monopoly”, which has to do with empirical competition (what do consumers move to or from in response to, particularly, price changes), not how markets are popularly described.
> If your point instead is that any brand that builds up a “pocket market” via good products and marketing is an abusive monopoly that just be stopped
Again, no. Building a non-competitive market via branding or other means makes you a monopoly, not necessarily an abusive one. You still have to abuse that monopoly to be an abusive monopoly.
I've had two posts in this thread, both of which take exactly the same position despite your ridiculous misinterpretation in between them; I haven't shifted, slowly or otherwise.
And the definition of market/monopoly is exactly the one used in antitrust law. That may be inconvenient for your desire to argue, but that doesn't change the facts. And I haven't presented any definition of an abusive monopoly, just corrected your claim that a particular definition of monopoly also meant any company that meant it was also an abusive monopoly, noting that “abusive” actually does have meaning.
I feel like Google might disagree.
Every company deserves a “monopoly” on their own product, unless they are a common carrier, a designation which is based on the government enabling them to exist through preferential treatment in the first place.
Apple created the Apple iPhone and they should be allowed to determine its destiny, as long as other companies are also allowed a fair shot to create their own competing devices.
Why?
Obviously hardware third party components without Ford's permission is a well established industry. Nobody questions it, except maybe a few lunatic capitalists like Elon Musk. Even then though, I think people like him keep their head on straight for the most part. They don't do much to facilitate it, but if you started selling compatible hardware components for his cars, I doubt they'd actually consider trying to stop you. (If I'm wrong about that, he's worse than I thought.)
Your supposition is that software components should be a special case, unlike hardware components, where companies have a right to deny anybody else the right to produce components without their permission. I say that's bullshit. They should be legally forbidden from creating products for which third party components can only exist if given permission.
When you go buy a phone, one of the factors you have to decide is "what app store do I want". If you go with Android, you might miss a few apps, but so what ? Most of them are also fungible, just use a similar one.
If it wasn't like that, we could say that Wall Mart is a monopoly because only they sell Great Value branded products.
You're explaining why Tesla doesn't have a charging port monopoly in practice. The hypothetical is that they do. You can't use any other power outlet in the same way that you can't install an Android app on an iPhone.
> When you go buy a phone, one of the factors you have to decide is "what app store do I want".
Which is what creates the app store monopoly. There wouldn't be one if you could make that decision independently, which is the whole point. It's classic tying.
Moreover, the "customer" of the app store is as much the developer as the user, given that they're the ones paying all the fees. But they don't get to choose between platforms any more than Walmart chooses to operate in Florida instead of California, because they have to reach their customers in both regions, not just one or the other.
By contrast, Nike can choose Target instead of Walmart because they both operate in both regions, so they can still reach substantially all of their customers through one store if the other is being unreasonable, since it's much easier for the customer to switch stores for a desired product when that doesn't require switching locations/platforms at the same time.
Those numbers, combined with the fact that a new competitor is arising to take market share away from Apple strongly implies that Apple is not currently behaving in an anticompetitive fashion.
Last checking GM's share price it was barely a composition of their revenue.
Why wouldn't they be? Does someone else compete with them for distributing apps on Uconnect? Can you install Ford Sync apps on your Jeep?
Alpine and Pioneer probably make replacements for Uconnect (iPhone) but it is not even close to the integration I get with my Jeep and Uconnect.