When you look at the multiple on services - the App Store could easily be >40% of Apple's total market cap.
They're going to stick their fingers in their ears as long as they can to defend that.
You don't give up the golden goose. You defend it.
I think it's inevitable iPhone 16 prices will increase in EU starting later this year. Arguably similar to Valve's Steam Deck, iPhone prices are subsidized by the apps revenue. Apple is going to try preserve their profit margins one way or another.
If people are prepared to pay more for an iPhone then Apple should have already increased prices, and if they are not then increasing prices will make less money.
The problem is that there's no opt-out, no one can (even try to) offer (real) alternatives, and thus it's impossible to judge the App Store's value proposition on its actual merits, and in the end consumers cannot vote with their wallets, there's no realistic way from the status quo (of Apple simply extracting economic rent) to a competitive market of stores.
Patè des californiens is going to be delicious.
Meanwhile, Android has dozens of stores and Google Play keeps the lion's share because it's built into almost every phone, has most of the apps anyway, and google's own safety assurances built-in. Google has gotten dinged but for much more insidious stuff behind the scenes, which still amounts to a few large publishers out of hundreds.
It's just paranoia at this point. Most of the market is captured, and any part Apple couldn't capture after 15 years (say, maybe premium games) is one they probably weren't every going to capture anyway. This is being worried about a crack in the brick wall while 99.999% of devs will just keep entering the front door like normal people. And most of the remaining people bypassing apple will just throw a brick at the door instead of meticulously exploit said crack.
Phones are "done". Geese don't live forever.
Switching away is hard. In the not too distant future a $99 no brand phone will be equivalent to the iPhone experience for 80% of use cases, modulo the camera.
If apps are just web apps and run on whatever hardware, Apple will need to come up with something new. Maybe the goose was really named Steve.
Obviously the same is true of the iPhone. And software is a big part of it. (I don't want to deal with Dell and Windows. And Asahi is getting better day-by-day.) And hardware too. (M1, M2, M3, etc.. and the A series chips allow their devices to really shine with the big battery, etc.)
And ... while I don't like the actual UX of Apple-land, I don't like it either that Google with all their PhDs and big brain still cannot fucking solve the jankyness.
Yes, they will hopefully be forced to give up the free money rent from the walled garden, and hopefully it will encourage them to invest in being a good platform, invest in software, win/keep market share on merits instead of by decree.
I'm not so sure, for the same reason people still buy MacBooks when cheap Windows laptops are available, and luxury cars when there is no shortage of lightly used Kias.
Laptops and cars have been around substantially longer than smartphones, but it's still very easy to see the difference between cheap and expensive. While technically yes all of them do "the same thing", people are willing to pay for premium, and I suspect (due to relative affordability if nothing else) that the market of people able and willing to pay for a nicer phone is and will remain quite large.
Also IPhone still has more revenue opportunity. AI assistant is the next one. Chat GPT has proven people are willing to spend $20 a month on AI that doesn't even hook up to your email, calendar, or files.
Maybe for some but not for everyone. In the past you could trust that your phone works 7 years instead of 2 years by having software updates. It also is very stable on software side.
I have saved so much money by buying iPhone and using it for more than 5 years.
> Chat GPT has proven people are willing to spend $20 a month on AI that doesn't even hook up to your email, calendar, or files.
The biggest benefit for paying is the large rate limit and the best accuracy on the market. Copilot is useless with 30 responds per day.
Something along the lines of:
"We urge all EU citizens with Apple devices to have an alternate means of accessing critical internet services like banking, to protect themselves in the event we are forced to block all Apple services EU-wide for legal non-compliance."
... then watch AAPL stock drop below NVDA ...
... and Apple come crawling back, suitably obedient.
This would be:
A) looking out for their citizens
B) making it clear who's boss
EU is Apple’s third largest market. The largest market ping pongs between China and the Americans
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/08/29/china-biggest-iphone-ma...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-11/apple-to-...