Hacker News Reader

> It's absolutely abusing market position,

It’s definitely a “dick move” but, I’d have trouble calling it abusive. Having to buy expensive development kits is common in our industry

View on HN

They only way to reach a significant market share is to put up with it, wouldn't that count as abusing their position? They don't have to care, because they know that developers have no choice, and in the process they increase their hardware sales? Imagine if google wanted to produce end-user hardware. Then they limit their SDK/NDK to only work on that new hardware. And, this isn't any magic or special hardware. Just an added EULA that restricts legal use, and lack of developer support. This is pretty much apple has done. Of course, doing something like that on an already established market would be suicide. But, developers would have also to a much larger extent chosen not to target Apple hardware, if it wasn't for the market share. That's why it is abusive and a case of anti-trust. They get away with it because of their market share.

The fact that the practice is widespread doesn't mean that it's not abusive. It just means that most players are also abusive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com