It's a monopoly, and it's illegal.
It's using an advantage in one area to force concessions in an unrelated area that I believe is illegal.
For example, Microsoft had an effective monopoly over PC operating systems.
That was unfortunate, but not illegal.
It was when they used that monopoly to disadvantage a rival browser maker --- Netscape -- that they broke anti-trust law.
I'm most interested in seeing what happens over Apple's decisions to force app providers to use Apple Sign-in if the offer any other 3rd party SSO.
As a developer, I may have valid security concerns regarding Apple Sign-in.
So their app store dominance seems unrelated to SSO infrastructure. And I don't fully understand how they can force me to use it if I decide to support Google or Facebook SSO in my app.
So I do wonder if that is an anti-trust violation.
Can you find me a single example of a monopoly (excluding regulated utilities) that don't use their power to force concessions in an unrelated area? What's the point otherwise?
The merger of state and corporate powers is complete. We live in a fascist world with surveillance that Stalin could only dream of.
So yea, a bit "unfortunate"
If you don't like Apple's walled garden then use Android.
Linageos is a possibility, but with the play services situation, running any mainstream app without phoning home to google is if not impossible, extremely difficult and filled with footguns.
Pine and Librem are exciting emerging possibilities but they have only been available for a very short time so it remains to be seen what will happen there.
Join the weird fringe phone crew.
A horizontal monopoly is if one company made all the cars.
A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads.
Apple is a vertical monopoly across its hardware, the software that runs on that hardware (they don't own the software, but they own the distribution channel), and some of the suppliers that manufacture components for the hardware.
That's not a good analogy. It's more like if you bought X's car model and X had a policy that you could only buy official, certified parts from certified dealers through which they get a cut. (App Store)
You can go for after market parts but if you break the car it's on you. ("Jailbreaking" AKA flashing your device)
This is like saying Uber has a monopoly on all of their own assets.
Wrong terminology.
A service like netflix, spotify or basecamp can't compete without an iOS app.
Apple has a monopoly on non-shit smartphones precisely because of their restrictive policies.
You think there is a chance in hell Apple and Google are not going to continue the trend of restricting devs and taking bigger profit shares for the "privilege" of being in the store? Its only going to get worse. Good for them for standing up.
You're arguing they lower their prices, and thats just going to cement their position.
We would all be better off if Apple lowered prices and we got alternatives. That's a win/win even if most users don't use the alternatives.
This is a meaningless definition of monopoly.
Why doesn’t this coalition of multi-billion dollar corporations invest in creating an Android based alternative with different policies?
That would add choice to the market rather than taking it away.
They can clearly afford to do so, but it seems like they just don’t feel the need to make the investment.
Is it clear? If it's that easy, how did Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon all fail in their efforts to break into that market?
It seems much simpler to force Apple to follow fair trade rules on the marketplace, than to force every other company to develop their own OS and hardware. Furthermore, the latter option basically bars anyone who isn't already in control of a large corporation from entering the mobile app market without Apple's blessing.
I don’t see why Epic couldn’t create their own gaming focussed device, and buy a bunch of exclusive titles including their own content.
If their store had better terms than Play, and accepted APKs, why wouldn’t other developers want to sell through it?
If the argument is that developers are desperate for better terms, it must follow that they would want to support a store which provided them.
Because of network effects, consumers just don't want a phone without their banking apps.
Epic tried to make a deal like you suggest with OnePlus and LG but it was cancelled due to Google pressure.
Network effects are strong, but not impossible to overcome. All they need to do is sell the device to users who don’t care about banking apps for long enough for banking apps to be uploaded to their store.
As for the the deal with OnePlus and LG. I don’t believe it was anything like what I am suggesting - that was just a co-marketing effort.
They weren’t going to create a new and open platform based on Android.
The argument that nobody can ever compete against Android no matter what they do is a weak one.
The iPod was an incredibly niche device when it was launched.
There is a proven market for handheld gaming platforms that don’t run banking apps. Epic could start there and build out, just like Apple did.
So yeah, they could do that but it would be pointless.
This is false at face value.
If they put cellular functionality and an open app store on the device, it would be de-facto competing in the mobile app market.
Nobody would buy a phone that only plays (a few) games and has very little useful apps. You're not arguing in good faith.
Are you saying that nobody can ever successfully sell a handheld gaming device again?
People in fact do buy handheld devices that play games, and there is no reason Epic cannot enter the handheld gaming market.
If they can sell a handheld gaming device, they can make that device cellular, and they can add an App Store. People won’t buy it as a phone or to run app initially, but if they sell it successfully as a gaming device, they can use that success to attract more apps to the store.
But do people buy devices exclusively for playing handheld games? The 3DS is now officially out of production (and hadn’t had first party games in years, IIRC) and the Vita has been dead for longer. That leaves the Nintendo Switch, and while the Lite does exclusively play games in handheld mode, it plays the entire library of Switch games, including ones that were originally only designed for home consoles. And Nintendo created the dedicated gaming handheld market and was the uninterrupted leader and as often as not %70+ marketshare monopoly ever since Gunpei Yokoi made the Game&Watch AFAIK.
The issue is market power
The citations of global mobile device market share are deceptive. It is not necessary for US regulators to prove that Apple has a monopoly in India to prove that they are engaged in anticompetitive behaviors in the US. If you want to make money as a mobile app developer, deciding not to support iOS can be a crippling decision. You don't really have a choice[2].
----
[0]: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
[1]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/11/as-usual-apples-ap...
[2]: That ends up being the much more interesting argument anyway, because Apple advocates mostly want Apple to be able to force developers to jump through hoops. I've seen a lot of arguments on this topic that say that 3rd-party app stores would be a disaster because companies wouldn't be de-facto forced to distribute through the primary app store.
For those people, the duopoly and monopolistic power structures are the point -- they're not debating whether or not Apple is so powerful that it's taking away developer choice. They want Apple to take away developer choice.
I disagree with those people, but I find their position to be much more compelling than, "India uses Android, so the US can't regulate its own market."
Why do you not have a choice? If your product is not stocked in Walmart or Amazon, who make up the bulk of U.S. retail, can you not make money? Having your app exclusively on Android can make plenty of money. Epic makes plenty of money on other platforms. Many game publishers are successful publishing exclusively for one console. Pandora was fine before mobile apps. Many dating websites exist. 40% of a particular segment of the computing sector in a market as huge as the US does not monopoly make.
Antitrust actions are aimed at restoring public oversight over public markets. Two companies should not have the ability to lock developers entirely out the mobile app market.
>If you run a platform where others come to sell, then you don’t get to sell your own items on the platform because you have two comparative advantages. One, you’ve sucked up information about every buyer and every seller before you’ve made a decision about what you’re going to sell. And second, you have the capacity — because you run the platform — to prefer your product over anyone else’s product. It gives an enormous comparative advantage to the platform.
Costco charges a membership to use their store (“platform”), similar to buying an iPhone. Costco offers reduced-price store brand goods. Costco controls and decides which third-party goods are available in the store. This is all generally considered to be to the consumers advantage due to lower prices and good experience. If the consumer does not like Costco, they can go to a different store. If a consumer does not like the experience of purchasing their apps in the app store, they can use Safari to access the web site, purchase an Android or use a PC for their computing needs, and a console/portable for their gaming needs. The number of competitors to the iPhone platform is lower than the number of competitors to Costco, but it’s not an insignificant number of alternatives. If ALL mobile platforms did not allow sideloading and charged similar rates, AND it was impossible to create a new mobile platform (admittedly difficult, RIP Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, Firefox OS) AND it could be shown webapps are not viable (they are viable) then Apple plus the other platform might have an anti-trust problem.
As it is it’s a unfair to punish Apple for successfully curating a good experience where users are happy and comfortable spending money. All retailers set the conditions for sellers to sell with them.
That sounds like an incredible headache for the customer wishing to opt for an alternative.
> If ALL mobile platforms did not allow sideloading and charged similar rates, AND it was impossible to create a new mobile platform (admittedly difficult, RIP Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, Firefox OS) AND it could be shown webapps are not viable (they are viable) then Apple plus the other platform might have an anti-trust problem.
You've made my argument for me: nobody wants to use a webapp and just about no one does. There's only one other mobile platform with any market share and it's Google's Android. The Sisyphean task of launching a new OS into this fray is so high that even an authoritarian nation-state isn't going to do it, so let's just call a spade a spade and say it's impossible.
Google's Android doesn't give you blue bubbles so say goodbye to much of your iPhone-privileged social circle, which uses blue bubbles as a new kind of social elitism predicated on wealth-peacocking. You're essentially bullied into one avenue or the other and the apps you paid for a long tether of slavery to the platform you've picked. It's enough to give someone Stockholm syndrome but I'm not yet out catching bullets for them, are you?
All of these corporations need to be broken up. The problem is not just Apple. But Apple's platform is locked down so tight they will stop at nothing to get their penny's share, whether you're a cool new email service (Hey) or you want to launch a gaming cloud service (xCloud, Stadia, you-name-it).
This is not Costco selling generic fruits and meats for your consumption. This is a dominion of access to how you communicate, to how you read, to how you play.
Probably one solution is to place the bet on anti-trust instead. It's still not quite right, but if you bend the current legal understanding of "trust" a little bit, you can get there. Whereas, there's no amount of bending the interpretation of "monopoly" that will make Apple fit.
And the current lawsuits are arguing that Apple has a monopoly on payments on their own devices, not that they have a monopoly on the smartphone market. Big difference.
Epic is a monopolist.
/s
I clearly don’t actually believe this, but the point is that if Apple is a Monopolist, then so is Epic.
Epic has a store, but doesn't have a large-market-share hardware platform they control exclusively to go with it. Any machine I can install the Epic app store on, I can also install Steam on.
If people are pushing for a change in framework where no hardware manufacturer is allowed to control what software is installed on their platform, I actually think that might be a good change across the board.
The groups targeting Apple don’t care about any such freedom. They simply want more money for themselves without having to invest.
On Apple's app store the product is iOS software. Apple do control how all iOS software is sold.
Seriously, this isn't complicated...
It’s all just software.