Unless you're competing with something Apple is planning to bring out (parental control apps before screen time stats, etc).
I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?
I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?
As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.
Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.
It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.
iOS has always been designed as not to offer APIs that can be used for particularly harmful purposes.
I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.
No, this is very unique to Apple, and only on iOS. Its the reason why iPhone web browsers have to use Safari under the hood.
All the browser-makers successfully compete on features, as proved by the continued existence of multiple browsers on the App Store. Hell, Firefox can even afford to cannibalise its own market with two versions of Firefox (FF, and FF Focus).
Furthermore all the big name browser makers sell their offering at "free". In my view, this makes browsers an outlier in any discussion of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. It doesn't shut down the conversation, just takes browsers out of it.