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You don't need to be a monopoly to have antitrust action taken against you, you just need to have sufficient market power and engage in behavior which is anti-competitive.

House Antitrust Committee chairman David Cicilline yesterday:

“Because of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents — highway robbery, basically — bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,” said Rep. Cicilline. “It’s crushing small developers who simply can’t survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldn’t happen.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295778/apple-app-store-...

Oh it is possible to get Apple to change. Not by asking nicely, but perhaps by carrying a big stick. The arrogance Apple displays today is much the same as Microsoft back in the day. Let's hope for a similar outcome as back then, which fundamentally changed Microsoft for the better. It's possible, but not if we don't try.

Nothing David Cicilline said amounts to anything more than talk. He frequently refers to them as a monopolist in that podcast, but that means a very specific thing in antitrust law. DoJ or FTC would have to prove in court that Apple has "monopoly power" in a relevant market. Since a court will toss it out when Apple moves for a summary judgement if their antitrust theory is that Apple's 45% of the smartphone market gives them monopoly power (based on precedent), they will try to define the market more narrowly to something like "iOS applications".

But again a court is unlikely to accept that reasoning. And if you think about it for 3 seconds it's obvious why: Apple's "monopoly" was established when the App Store was launched in 2008 when the iPhone was an insignificant share of the market. That would also mean that any future product (like the AR glasses, or from any other company) would have "monopoly power" in their platform as soon as they ship 1 unit. This is obviously an absurd outcome.

A house member can say anything they want. It means absolutely nothing legally. If small developers can’t live off of 70%. They need to raise their prices by 43% to account for the 30% cut.

> Apple is not a monopoly! They have a majority (not monopoly) on a very specific US-based market

In the video "Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel", Peter Thiel discusses this. The problem here is in how you define "monopoly". If you're a large company, you want to say that the market is a lot larger than what you are operating in. To take this to an extreme, you could say that you're a technology company and if people dont like cell phones, they can use tablets/laptops/desktops. Conversly, if you narrow the definition of monopoly, there are tons of them. E.g. how many supermarkets are there within a 4 block radius of my house?

Because of this, instead of simply looking at scope, a common method is to look at what sort of behavior is the company taking. Is the supermarket lowering its prices below profitable to not allow another supermarket to survive in my neighborhood? In the case of Apple, I think people see the behavior of controlling the App Market as a monopolistic behavior which prevents others from competing.

That’s “common” based on what judicial precedent. What makes Peter Thiel’s opinion more relevant than any random HN poster who doesn’t know what a monopoly is?

In fairness to Hey, they didn't plan to be in this situation. They thought they did everything apple wanted them to, and they spent years building this service, only to then find out apple won't allow it.

If you're going to exclude all potential products where you have to go through apple to be a major player (given the competition), you're excluding most of the software market. Maybe developers don't really have a choice?

And yeah, apple is not a monopoly, but apple/google for sure is a duopoly, and google is only incrementally better than apple.

Google tolerates exactly the behavior Hey wants for its app.

I'm not saying the answer is to break them up, but clearly as was shown with Microsoft in the 90s, they could be forced to allow competition on their devices, like Microsoft had to allow for different search engines on their browsers and different default browsers. Apple could be forced to allow alternative app stores or to stop dragging their feet on PWA features or any other number of reasonable regulations like that.

> but clearly as was shown with Microsoft in the 90s, they could be forced to allow competition on their devices

But as the parent comment you're replying to said, the situations aren't comparable.

Microsoft had over 90% of the market in the 90s. You could not stop using Windows, because there was simply no credible alternative for most consumers. That's not true for iOS.

If Microsoft at the time had, say, 50% of the market the outcome would likely have been extremely different.

It depends how you define market. Apple has control over 100% of ios apps.

I doubt ms had 90% of consumer electronics market or even os.

Walmart has 100% monopoly over their store space. Verizon has 100% monopoly over what can connect to their network. Google has a monopoly over the Play Store. Cows have a monopoly over milk production. At which point does this argument stop working?

> I doubt ms had 90% of consumer electronics market or even os.

You should probably look that up then, instead of "doubting": https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

Yes, but Walmart cannot stop another supermarket from opening in the same area, Verizon cannot stop you from bringing another phone to their network. Android allows other stores. Cows? Oh wait, you've got me there.

You sure about that? Small town businesses have lamented Walmart moving in for ages, Verizon can _absolutely_ prevent another phone from joining their network, they even charge activation fees on top of it all. And Android _is_ the alternative store if you don't like shopping on iOS, and the monopoly holder to boot. I can't run .ipa files on Android either, why can't we sue Google for not supporting that SDK, since they're a smartphone OS monopoly holder?

While I agree with everything you're saying, Google's android literally allows you to install third party app stores and even sideload apps. Google does not behave at all like Apple in that regard.

Sure, but how does that make Apple a monopoly abuser without broadening the definition to the point of it being applicable to damn near everything?

Who is going to do all the work of fighting a Trust when they drag their feet using legal grey area or random excuses?

Government worked out the correct action a long time ago. When you see a trust, you destroy it, when you still get collusion between the separate companies that is manageable since collusion has prisoners dilemmas.

Microsoft was never required to allow multiple search engines. Nor were they required to allow other default browsers in the US.

I’m sure the government has to technical wherewithal to make sure that Apple is compliant with browser standards....

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_...

https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

Care to quote the part where the US government forced the browser choice screen like the EU did?

Did I ever explicitly say the US in my comment? No. However, the entire case against Microsoft was built on its anticompetitive practices against Netscape. And Microsoft lost.

In the US, "The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance."

By having full access to the API, MS could no longer give IE special privileges (for example, being the only default browser choice when a link is clicked to be opened). At any rate, it's not a stretch to imagine similar movements towards Apple's app store. The parallels are quite similar.

I specifically said in the comment that you replied to “Nor were they required to allow other default browsers in the US.”

The parallels aren’t similar. Apple has less than 50% market share in the US and even less in Europe. Every console maker does the same as Apple.

There is no percentage-based threshold for antitrust. Price fixing, anticompetitive activities, cornering markets, etc can all trigger antitrust violations. Mobile computing is a far more important and mission critical foundation of modern life than video gaming. This is why there's a big push for net neutrality. The Federal government has all the authority it needs to regulate Apple if they decide it's worth doing. I support reigning in big tech.

Their app store is on their devices. They forbid any other similar service.

So they creted a platforn and enforce service. Thats creating playground, rules and playing the game.

Remember microsoft was subjected to antitrust regulations for providing web browser with the os. This was considered unfair practice. Forcing people to give up 30 of revenue goes much much further.

By giving customers no choice, it's limiting hardware capabilities of your device.

> Remember microsoft was subjected to antitrust regulations for providing web browser with the os. This was considered unfair practice. Forcing people to give up 30 of revenue goes much much further.

This only became an issue when their market share was far greater than the competition, which is simply not the case.

This is just developer sour grapes. You want more money. Just say it.

But 95% of computers sold ran windows then. 10% of computers run MacOS now and maybe 20% of phones. Just buy a different computer, or don't... Or if you are a developer, make software for Windows or Android instead.

>maybe 20% of phones

Sure, if you're just counting units sold. But by total app store revenue, the metric that actually matters, they account for well over two thirds of the market.

because people care about the ecosystem and that has real monetary value to all three (consumer, seller, marketplace)

The fact that Microsoft was a subject to the anti-trust investigation for giving away their browser for free is not an indicator of a just law and its correct application. The law is flawed and that case was simply a hint to MS that they should've lobbied proper people in the government. "Pay us or else" - a typical practice of any government with unreasonably wide powers over country's economy.

> Their app store is on their devices.

Their users devices.

I think that's exactly the point and it even applies to Macbooks: Apple just makes some pretty average laptops with poor price-performance ratio (even in the allegedly-high-end segment) and they clearly don't have a monopoly or even significant market share [1] in that category. Apple is just somewhat unique in that there is a very vocal minority of people who have decided that they only ever want to use Apple laptops (some Thinkpad users are similar), and of course Apple has a 100 % monopoly on Apple laptops, obviously. Viewed through this lens a lot of the coverage of Mac hardware makes a lot more sense; it never was about rational decision making.

[1] Apple owns less than 10 % of the laptop market.

I don’t buy Apple laptops or any laptops Any more but it’s interesting that you cite poor price-performance.

15 years ago when I did they had great cost-performance, i.e. they held their value relative to the competition, remained usable for longer for a number of reasons and when sold actually yielded better value over the full lifecycle. Has this changed?

Yes. For one, the keyboards fail.

On some models made in some years and the manufacturer has admitting the fault and extended an extra warranty to cover the fault and made adjustments to the process to avoid that fault in the future.

Surely indicative of the shoddy quality Apple is known for...

They are indeed a monopoly in a certain market segment - aka, those who are more than willing to pay for apps.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-users-spend-twice-apps...

Their existing monopolistic actions like “preventing interoperability at any cost” feeds this viscous cycle where high school kids are embarrassed to send text message to iPhone from an Android device.

I own Apple stock, would love then to crush competition, but let us not twist facts.

Perhaps the apps are higher quality in iOS due to the App Store policy, and consumers are more likely to invest in that quality.

Remove the gate, the quality dips. I'd imagine the amount willing to pay goes down too.

I‘m more and more of the opinion that oligolipolies (multi-monopolies) should be treated the same as monopolies. Just because there is more than a single provider still does not mean there is a free market and consumers have actual choice. Google and Apple both pull extremely anticompetitive behavior lately and the excuse of „just switch to the other side“ bypasses reality. There are quite a lot of studies that free markets start working only if there are more than 4 parties left to compete with significant market share.

Citations missing since I‘m on mobile.

So what do you propose the government do?

The monopoly in this case is the distribution of iOS applications and payment within them. Breaking that up means allowing other payment options within apps and potentially allowing side loaded applications.

And Amazon has a monopoly on Kindle apps and Spotify has a monopoly on music that can be played on its platform.

That’s not how monopolies work.

Apple absolutely has a monopoly on phone apps. You can either get an app on the Apple App Store or the Google Play store in practice. Both charge 30% fees for every dollar spent on digital products, that they did nothing to provide. They have absolute authority on what apps can and cannot be used on phones.

Not sure why everyone has rose colored glasses for Apple's hardware enforced software monopoly.

Most of the apps on those stores don't have to be OS Apps, they can be Web Apps, accessbile from any device connected to the Internet.