Every developer KNOWS that Google is extremely abusive towards them solely because of their position in the market yet nothing ever improves. If these are not illegal monopolies, what is?!
So if you think it is problematic to have two players in a market even when they are on equal footing then you need to promote legislation to make that illegal. Or if you think there's something specifically harmful about this pair of dominant players then those externalities need to be addressed through legislation.
But shouting "monopoly" is, at this point, counter-productive IMHO.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bd2b38f1-9b66...
What's required, and lacking, is the political will to prosecute.
If I live in a country with only one phone provider, is that a monopoly? To someone living in that country, yes.
But, I could live in another country, and use another phone provider. See, I have choice, therefore it's not a monopoly, right?
If you buy an Apple device, your only choice for where to get apps from is from Apple's store.
Within that market, they are a monopoly. They control what stores run on that platform, and they choose not to permit competition.
What rationale they use for not permitting alternative stores, what terms they set for apps to be on their platform, those are all different issues.
I can choose not to use Apple's devices, sure, but that doesn't alter that Apple is a monopoly on their own platform.
General purpose computing is something special and it needs to be defended, because it touches on almost all our civil rights discussions today. Global freedom of speech, privacy, etc... are all in the hands of less than a dozen companies.
Which should start with forcing these devices open (everything from bootloader keys, basic information needed to get Linux running, etc...). I can tolerate Android like I tolerate Windows 10, but the iOS situation is just especially awful.
It's a distinction without a difference in terms of the power they exert, but legally speaking, the distinction is relevant because the types of behaviors that are proscribed (in the U.S., at least) are relatively narrowly defined. This is not the first time these laws would have to be modified to account for shifts in market exploitation practices, nor will it be last.
For a recent discussion of the topic, see [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/opinion/joan-robinson-eco...
The argument is about whether forcing open channel reseller participation is beneficial to consumers. This was done with the American car franchise dealership, which was legally enforced across most states to protect dealers from being competed with by direct sales, and also to prevent pricing and quality shenanigans with repairs in the old days when cars needed constant repairs and there were more car companies that might pull out of a market and leave consumers without a proper repair facility .
But this model has been falling apart from a consumer POV who largely prefer direct sales and repairs these days (see Tesla), and direct sales largely save the customers money (the $ of vehicles is higher with a dealership model).
I suspect folks need to be careful what they wish for. The 30% cut (or near it) will almost certainly be retained in an open store model if the store isn’t otherwise subsidized.
I don’t think this holds.
I shop at multiple grocery stores, but only one mobile app store. Apple has a monopoly on sales of apps to iPhone users.
If I sell fruit I can distribute it through multiple channels. If business though one channel sours I can take my business elsewhere.
If I’m an iOS app maker with a popular app I can only distribute it on Apple’s store. If I can no longer distribute my app through Apple’s store then I’m screwed. Apple has a monopoly on the distribution of iOS apps.
If you made an app solely for iOS it was your decision and investment. You could just make it for the Web so every person could access it from any platform.
Closed platforms, as stated by judge to Epic lawyers, are legal types of vertical business. You have Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo with same rules.
If Apple made their way with closed platform from the beginning on mature mobile market the question is why you decided to go to that market (and everyone else) in the first place?
The answer is very simple - on Android most of users are pirating apps, so as developer you won't make a lot of money. Also, in 2008 Apple's 30% tax was unprecedented since in other places it was 50-80%.
Now you, as iOS developer want not to pay Apple's tax but have everything they created - user install base which pays money, push notification services, support and everything else. Just don't want to pay for those services in which Apple invested tens of billions through the years.
From security standpoint - just two weeks ago Android well known third part App Store named APKMirror was installing trojans on user's devices. Do we, Apple users, want same experience? No. That's why most of Google employees/engineers in California and other parts of the world use iPhones and Macbooks.
>Google's app store dominance is not constrained by Apple's App Store, which is only available on iOS devices.
In recent times they have added the ability to set default apps and opened up the find my network to non Apple devices. These seem like things that wouldn't have happened without the legal pressure.