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Comment by nodamage | Hacker News Reader

The way you have defined the word monopoly does not make legal or practical sense. Consider this, if Apple only ever made 100 smartphones and sold them to 100 people and had 0.00001% share of the smartphone market, no one in their right mind would consider them a monopoly or ever consider bringing an anti-trust case against them for the restrictions they impose on their own App Store.

But everything you said would still hold true:

"They have a monopoly on iOS app stores." "This is a different market than Android app stores because the set of customers is completely different."

So clearly this definition cannot be the correct way to define what is and isn't a monopoly.

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> But everything you said would still hold true

That's because it would still be true, because the market for apps for a particular type of phone that has its own type of apps is a separate market no matter what percentage of the market for phones that type of phone represents.

In practice if the market was that small then nobody would care. It takes a certain market size before it's worth the effort of bringing a case against the monopolist. But that's a different question than whether there is one or not.

Your argument is essentially that if a small town with a population of 100 has only a single retail store within two hours drive, that store doesn't have a local monopoly because not enough people live there. But they still do. Even if they're too small for anybody to do anything about it in practice.

Apple, of course, is not that small.

> That's because it would still be true, because the market for apps for a particular type of phone that has its own type of apps is a separate market no matter what percentage of the market for phones that type of phone represents.

That's incredibly tautological. Walmart has a monopoly on the distribution of products sold in Walmarts. Nintendo has a monopoly on the distribution of games on Nintendo products. Visa has a monopoly on Visa transactions.

These are not meaningful distinctions: the consumer has a choice not to shop at Walmart, not to buy a Nintendo product, and not to use a Visa card. Similarly, the consumer has a choice not to buy an Apple product.

The types of apps available on a particular phone are part of the purchasing decision of which phone to buy, just like which games are available for a gaming console might influence which console you buy.

> That's incredibly tautological.

It's not, because markets are defined by economics and not brands. People keep asserting over and over again that a brand is not a market, but nobody is claiming that, they just happen to coincide in this case.

What defines a market is whether there are substitutes. If you have an iPhone and need an app, and you could install an Android app on your iPhone, then iPhone apps and Android apps would be the same market. But since you can't, they're not.

Notice how this doesn't apply to random Walmart products. There may be a Walmart brand of motor oil that only Walmart sells, but you can go to Amazon and buy a different brand of motor oil and still use it in the same car. The relevant market is "motor oil of the spec that works with your car" rather than "Walmart motor oil" and Walmart doesn't have a monopoly on that.

But for the market "apps of the spec that works with your iPhone" you can only buy through Apple, so they do have a monopoly.

"If you have an Xbox and need a game, and you could install a Nintendo game on your Xbox, then Xbox games and Nintendo games would be the same market. But since you can't, they're not."

Sorry, that makes no sense. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all compete in the market of video games. They are not competing in three separate markets of "video games for Xbox", "video games for Playstations", and "video games for Nintendos". Nintendo games are substitutes for Xbox games, even though you can't take a Nintendo game and directly plug it into an Xbox.

As another commenter put it, you're gerrymandering the definition of the market to suit your argument.

> These are not meaningful distinctions: the consumer has a choice not to shop at Walmart, not to buy a Nintendo product, and not to use a Visa card. Similarly, the consumer has a choice not to buy an Apple product.

A better analogy would be having a person with you all the time and told you what products you can buy or not buy from any of these stores and took a 30% either from you or the producers everytime you did.

Walmart is only a monopoly on walmart branded products sold on Walmart, for everything else you have the option to buy them somewhere else. Apple has monopoly on every single app sold on their app store, you can't buy them somewhere else without depending on the developer making a different version and forgoing the iPhone you had already bought.

I was not actually trying to make an analogy here to the overall situation, only pointing out the absurdity of determining whether a company has a monopoly based on arbitrarily restricting the definition of the market. That is not how the courts determine those things. They look at factors like market share and whether or not the consumer has access to alternative products.

> Apple has monopoly on every single app sold on their app store, you can't buy them somewhere else without depending on the developer making a different version and forgoing the iPhone you had already bought.

As I said elsewhere, both the hardware and software are part of the purchasing decision you make when you buy a phone. If you don't like the software, you can choose to buy a different phone.

>The way you have defined the word monopoly does not make legal or practical sense

Maybe not to you but it is how the anti-monopoly law work in lots of countries. Funny that you can just say "Doesn't work, NEXT!" as if you know better than Telegram's lawyers. Apple will be fined or settle.

I can't speak for every country, but in the EU I think it's likely the case will be thrown out due to the inability to prove that Apple has "substantial market power" with 25% market share.

The Commission considers that low market shares are generally a good proxy for the absence of substantial market power. The Commission's experience suggests that dominance is not likely if the undertaking's market share is below 40 % in the relevant market.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...

You keep using their share of the phone market when we're talking about the app market. Whether the iOS app market and the Android app market are the same market has nothing to do with what percentage of the market for phone hardware each platform has.

The two are inextricably linked. Which apps are available on a phone are part of the decision of which phone you might prefer to buy.

> The way you have defined the word monopoly does not make legal or practical sense... if Apple only ever made 100 smartphones ...

That is precisely the point. iPhone has a market share of 45% in the US. Therefore Apple has absolute control on 45% of the US population's app provision, they are precisely a monopoly (etymology: single - provider) for that market. If 45% of the roads in the US was built by Apple and they had absolute control what cars run on it, they would still be a monopoly for all intents and purposes of why a monopoly is harmful and extractive.

Before we think "but users can buy Android too", iOS and Android are not completely fungible operating systems nor the hardware they come with. Even if they were, at best it would mean we had a duopoly instead.

I don't disagree with you here. iOS and Android definitely constitute a duopoly worldwide, and Apple's market share in the US may be high enough for anti-trust concerns to apply. The key point is the percentage market share is an important consideration in determining whether a company has a monopoly or not.

I'm only taking exception with claim that "Apple has a monopoly on iOS app stores" based on reasoning that ignores market share, because that reasoning is tautological.

Also, Telegram's complaint was filed in the EU where Apple only has 25% market share and likely would not be considered to have a monopoly.

> Before we think "but users can buy Android too", iOS and Android are not completely fungible operating systems nor the hardware they come with.

Competitors do not need to be 100% identical to be considered alternative products to each other. Xboxes, Playstations, and Nintendos have different hardware and software but they are all competing in the gaming console market.

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