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Comment by justrealist | Hacker News Reader

IANAL but it's baffling to me that this one took so long. This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time. Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that "free" could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?

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Isn't part of the problem how US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs? In the case of Apple's monopoly, its not clear how you would measure that let alone prove it to a court.

Consumer harm is pretty easy to argue, Apple doesn't tax macos programs but it does tax ios programs. That argument results in billions of dollars of consumer harm. There are many arguments against that view as well, but I just wanted to show that it is easy to argue for consumer harm.

I don't think that's enough though is it? To my mind the strong counter argument is that consumers are choosing to pay higher prices for "higher quality" (i know that often not the case with the scams on the app store) apps and if they want cheaper apps they are free to switch to android.

Here is a recent example of consumer harm posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39773736

> I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.

Apple users are being forced to pay more for equivalent software because of Apple's tax.

Oh 100% I agree. My question/point is about how the US system treats monopolistic practices, and I worry that actually that example works in Apple's favour as they would likely argue that consumers are free to switch to android if they want cheaper apps.

If apple were to pay for the android replacement phone & perform the transfer of personal data to the new device then that might be a valid argument. As it is they do their best to lock users in to prevent them from ever switching.

US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs?

This is more a matter of interpretation, policy and practice rather than statute and these things can change over time. The interpretation you're describing was itself an innovation at one time.

“Your honor, my family has to suffer the Green Bubble when chatting with iPhone friends. This has caused us irreparable mental harm and anguish”.

IANAL but that has been the modern interpretation whereas in the past that wasn't the case. Standard Oil was good for the consumer for example.

How is this even a monopoly? That's like saying "Walmart has a monopoly on selling products at its stores." There are thousands of competing phones with their own software and app stores.

They have a remarkably durable market share. Some people are in effect forced to choose apple since apps they need (in some cases medical apps!) are iPhone only as the seller just does not bother with android.

There's approximately 2 app stores, I wouldn't call that competition.

Even in the most egregious days of Microsoft's OS monopoly, you could still choose to install software. Apple makes it basically impossible to do this outside of the context of their app store, which they charge heavily for access to and have no qualms removing or preventing apps that compete with its own. If this doesn't constitute monopolistic behavior, the bar is so high I'm not sure anything would ever qualify for it.

There is one competing phone platform with a store that has conveniently decided on identical fees. It's a duopoly. But also one where you can only shop with one of them.

The comparison is this: Walmart and Target are the only two stores that exist. They've also basically agreed to set the same prices on everything. And once you buy from Target once, you must buy everything else from Target too, and if you want to switch to Walmart, you have to throw out everything you bought at Target.

If Walmart had a 60% market share then yes the JD would be on their balls for store brands.

How sure are you about that?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/252678/walmarts-net-sale...

It looks like roughly 60% of groceries are sold at Walmart in the US. And unlike phones, where you can choose Android easily, many regions have only Walmart to shop at.

That's the wrong metric. It should be obvious that the US market share of walmart on groceries, merchandise, and health don't conveniently sum to 100%, and that's not how you would present that data. You're looking at the % of WalMart's sales, not market share.

The answer is more like 25%: https://www.axios.com/2023/04/20/most-popular-grocery-stores

This is saying 58% of Walmart's sales are groceries. Not 58% of grocery sales are through Walmart.

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