https://www.gsmarena.com/makers.php3 loads of mobile phone companies, lots of healthy competition. Non-technical consumers don't perceive the device and the OS as separate things.
Twitter as big as it is, is just a website across millions of others. In the mobile app market there is exactly two companies, Apple and Google, that's it.
Does Oppo or Samsung has any power when publishing an app? No? Then they are not part of this market.
https://www.apple.com/services/ https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/ https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/
Of course, these are not the bread and butter products.
I find it a bit pointless to separate their hardware and software. I know few people who run Windows or Linux on their Apple hardware. For me, Apple is primarily a products company that excels in fusing hardware and software together. They are increasingly expanding into services, too.
And similarly again there's none you can buy from Oppo and Samsung (I'll consider the Samsung store negligible in terms of market share).
Apple has consistently made more money from collecting their 30% tax than they have from manufacturing iPhones:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263402/apples-iphone-rev...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/296226/annual-apple-app-...
The only fair resolution here is to force Apple to compete with other storefronts to prove that the value they provide is competitive. Apple could resolve this issue in a number of ways, but they've only chose to make the problem worse; that's why 34 states have come forward voicing their concern[0], and why EU regulators have been stepping in to block Apple's service expansions. They're the largest company in the world, and they deserve the most regulatory scrutiny for it; anything else is a failure of democracy and capitalism.
[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-dozens-u-states-apple-03470...
That's exactly right! Then fewer and poorer apps would be built on iOS, and users would notice, and they would migrate to other platforms. This has happened plenty of times before. Yes, Apple has a monopoly over the iPhone - it's an Apple product. Just like Sony have a monopoly over the PS5, and Samsung has a monopoly over the WF45R6300AV Front Load Washing Machine.
The only fair resolution would be to allow Apple to do whatever it wants with Apple devices. If everyone at Apple collectively lost their minds tomorrow, they would have every right to pull all apps from the App Store completely. They could shut down the platform. It's literally theirs in every sense of the word. They built it. They own it. They operate it. Just because people are concerned doesn't make socializing iPhones or the App Store in any way reasonable.
You're admitting yourself that there's not much value provided by the appstore to developers and they only use it because they have not choice (and I do agree with that being a developer myself)
It's called market abuse. Other companies have been broken before for abuse, that won't be the first one.
Up to a point, no. Common Carrier laws have been around for a long time and had demonstrable benefits. Net neutrality means phone companies can't use their infrastructure however they like. AT&T wanted to just sit on their patent for the transistor but was pushed by the government into to licensing it to Motorola, TI, etc. There's no reason why similar regulations couldn't be applied to mobile app platforms.
Apple does not make 30% profit off of total iPhone revenue, as they do still have to pay for development, infrastructure, and supporting staff.
They have a historical 38% margin on hardware, and just reported a 70% margin on first-party services.
The stores (iTunes Store, App Store, Books) may very well be their lowest margin divisions. Which would make sense, since they are selling other people's products.
You bought the hardware from Apple knowing exactly what restrictions they place on the hardware. You were knowledgeable about it and still decided to purchase the hardware.