You paid $1000 knowing that you couldn’t install arbitrary software. You had a choice. You could have bought an Android like 85% of the world.
If Microsoft was found guilty, I don’t see why Apple is innocent.
iOS has <15% marketshare, and millions of people transition back and forth across platforms regularly. I was on Android, now I'm on iOS, and tomorrow I could be on Android if there was a compelling case.
Apple is abusive, and needs to be reigned in, but comparing iOS to the late-90s Windows situation betrays a misunderstanding of the situation in the 90s.
Abuse on this market will most likely affect content producers more than users. It's not about consumers'choices. It's about the impact the current situation has on the rest of the market.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/antitrust-law.as...
Antitrust laws also referred to as competition laws, are statutes developed by the U.S. government to protect consumers from predatory business practices.
If these laws didn't exist, consumers would not benefit from different options or competition in the marketplace. Furthermore, consumers would be forced to pay higher prices and would have access to a limited supply of products and services.
One of the most famous early use of the antitrust is United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. in 1948 which ended the studio system. It was about vertical integration and how the studios used their power to both bully small cinemas and prevent competition on the production side. As you can see, there is no consumer in sight.
The Chicago School of economics pushed very hard for narrowing the scope of the law (obviously) but that's a fairly modern take.
There’s nothing anti-competitive or anti-consumer about walled gardens per say. Walled gardens are consistently chosen by consumers because they make devices easier to use and maintain and the user experience more predictable through actual enforcement of consistent UI standards.
Apple makes (fewer) billions of dollars as the gatekeeper to their App Store.
Google probably takes more than a 30% cut on the ad revenue that they place on 3rd party sites.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect analogy (that would be a contradiction). But in general companies make a product, they get to derive revenue directly by selling the product, and/or they can derive revenue by selling access to the users of that product.
Google gives the Search engine away for free because they can make way more money selling advertisers access. Apple increasingly is giving their phone away free-er (lower margin) because they can derive more revenue by selling access to services like App Store.
It’s their store. They created it. They sold it with the rules they created being clearly displayed on the package. They actually believe those exact rules to be a huge competitive advantage for them.
I believe the rules should be clear and evenly enforced, and they should not discriminate based on things like political/religious viewpoint or basically content beyond maturity rating/obscenity/hate speech.
Console makers could also wipe out game studios if they shut down.
If Apple shut down the App Store iPhone users would buy Android phones - like 85% of the rest of the world.
Old (2013) data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271228/android-vs-iphone...
In 2017[1], the iOS/Android market share between people 18-29 and people 30-59 seems to be almost identical, and while the market share of people 60+ shows a bit more of a bias toward iOs, it's not a super dramatic difference. In any case, I think this mostly reflects that there are way, way more Android phones available at a huge range of price points than there are iPhones, and if you don't have a whole lot to spend on a new phone you're more likely to get an Android. Because it's pretty difficult to get a new iPhone for less then $350[2] and most of them are in the $600+ range, its audience tends to skew older just because older people tend to have more money.
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/911113/smartphone-os-sha...
[2]: The iPhone 7 is currently on sale for $350 through carriers, but the cheapest iPhone Apple admits to still making is the iPhone SE at $400.
> its audience tends to skew older just because older people tend to have more money.
Yeah, I didn't comment on the cause, but I expect that's a big reason for it.
In any case, it's still a far cry from near 90% iOS use in younger demographics. (I edited my other reply slightly - I didn't mean to imply that Android has a 90% marketshare in younger age groups, just that it's proportionally more popular than in older age groups.)
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/tablet/united...
In the US, iOS marketshare is around 45% and trails Android (which is around 50%).
Both platforms have enormous support across virtually every service. It is demonstrably easy to transition between platforms.
It looks more like 65% vs 35%, if we exclude other app stores.
If Google can’t make a competitive ecosystem, it only has itself to blame.
Also revenue has never been the deciding factor on what a “monopoly” is.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/07/micr...
>Microsoft has just issued a new strike to Google Chrome by handing its recently launched Edge browser to all Windows 10 users via Windows Update. In a stunning move that will bring Edge to millions of users, it will be available on Windows 10 versions 1803, 1809,1903 and 1909, according to Microsoft.
Honestly, this whole think has stunk for a long time. iOS is a platform and it is dominant. It severely reeks of monopolistic behaviour when they use their leverage on one platform to gain advantage in a new one. Apple Music doesn't have to pay the 30% tax while also getting free product placement from Apple as compared to something like Spotify.
Apple Music doesn't have to pay the 30% tax while also getting free product placement from Apple as compared to something like Spotify.
Spotify hasn’t allowed in app payments for years and don’t pay the 30% “tax” either.
Are you also against every grocery store having store brands and “slotting fees”?
If we didn't have nanny state to protect us probably Microsoft's dominance would have went unchallenged and you won't have the plethora of different services that we see.
In the real world, Microsoft and almost everyone else threw in the towel and just used Chromium because they realized there was no point in trying to make a browser engine.
Firefox is only barely hanging on while most of its revenue comes from a competitor (Google) and Apple just went its own way after supporting Safari on Windows for awhile.
The legislators - as usual ignorant of tech - didn’t do anything to curb MS’s power or control over operating systems and office productivity apps. Where they made and continue to make much of their money.
I could be off, but I feel like there was a time when the valuation of Microsoft was something like 100 times that of Apple, and Apple wasn't even leveraged like we expect companies to be now. I remember when it seemed like every story about Apple in the WSJ called them "beleaguered" or something similar.
And then, to have them some back and surpass Microsoft, while it was a triumph for Steve Jobs, it also did kind of seem like Microsoft had been hobbled. Especially because while Apple had broken out of its rut, Microsoft's stock price was stuck going nowhere for a very long time, post 2000.
Now Microsoft is having its own renaissance, but a lot of people thought it had lost its way.
Tidal had the backing of Jay-Z and several other artists.
I don't have any insider knowledge of the industry, but since COVID has been a thing, I've noticed that there are brands appearing that are local or regional, that look way better that what I'm used to, and so I'm asking myself if maybe there was something messed up or even corrupt about the distribution system before. If these brands can step in in a crisis, why didn't the store carry them before?
I don't have a really well-formed point, just a vague sense of vindication that yeah, markets (like an app store) are run by people, and maybe they're not run in the best manner and it isn't obvious. I think markets are valuable, just like computers, as tools to solve optimization problems. But like computers, they can fail to solve your specific problem, or have uncompetitive performance. Like computers, they're complex and you can easily be snowed about how well they're functioning if you're not immersed in details.
The only thing that would change this is if Apple was found to be "dominant" or have "monopoly power" in a "relevant market" as held by a court.
Isn't it anti competitive for a new service like a movie streaming app to be at a competitive disadvantage financially than if Apple decides to launch their own.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21121558/google-80-billion...
Cry me a river....
A regulator/prosecutor will certainly try to argue they're dominant! But market power is measured by market share, not share of revenue. That'd basically find anyone that sells high-end products in any category as a monopolist.
>Isn't it anti competitive for a new service like a movie streaming app to be at a competitive disadvantage financially than if Apple decides to launch their own.
Apple is not barred from competing with anyone in the App Store, just as Walmart isn't banned from competing with any of the vendors they stock in their stores.
Actually market share is routinely defined as share of revenue. It often makes more sense than number of units.
> That'd basically find anyone that sells high-end products in any category as a monopolist.
High-end products have high margins but low volume. High end producers are rarely dominating their market by share of revenue.
Consumers go in knowing that is the ecosystem they are buying into. Developers also go in knowing the same. Neither are forced, and have other options that are relatively comparable.
Phone market being essentially a duopoly, I don't want a independent service developer to be financially disadvantaged to compete and eventually the platforms owning all the big money making services.
The problem has way more to do with how this affects developers then how it affects consumers. The amount of control that Apple has over the US market is the reason why they should be targeted by an anti-trust investigation here.
You also fail to share that iOS developers are paid much much more when compared to android and they only have to target fewer devices and versions which makes developing much much easier than the fragmented cluster in android.
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony also get a cut of every game sold - even physical games.
US monopoly law has never been about producers. It’s been about consumers. Are consumers really better off with the insecure by design desktop operating systems? How much malware, ransomware, and viruses have there been on Windows? I’m not excusing Macs. The only thing that makes them safer is few people bother about writing malware for them.
Both these companies are not even monopolies in the countries they got sued in.
I’m looking forward to it because Apple is one of the most petty companies I’ve ever had the displeasure of being forced to deal with as a mobile software dev in the US where they have a huge market share.
Apple won't want to have 5 different systems for 5 different regions of the world. They'll streamline everything into one app store model that works for everybody.