> Your list of services where you claim Apple has a dominant position is entirely products where it does not have a dominant position.
I am not claiming that. I am claiming that Apple has a very dominant position over the most important sales channel lots of companies have to rely on to compete.
Just one example is the at this point famous App Store tax. From a 10$ Apple Music subscription, 9.8$ (lets use these cents for processing) goes to Apple.
For a 10$ Spotify subscription, Spotify makes 7$ after Apple takes their 30% fee. Sure one may say, hey, but Spotify isn't forced to use Apple's service for payments, except they are. Otherwise they loose access to *the* platform most people listen to their music nowadays. Spotify also isn't allow to make Apple subscriptions more expensive and inform users about cheaper subscriptions on their website, because otherwise they'd loose access to the important platform. I guess one can see how this could be considered a abuse of the dominant marked position?
Strictly speaking, for this example past tense would have been fitting. Not because Apple is so generous, but because the EU also considered much of this behavior to be anti-competitive. Hence me wondering if the US courts would be following this line of thinking.
What frustrates me the most is Apple's double dipping. They argue that those fees are required for the development of the platform and technology, pretending as if they didn't already charge a hefty price tag on the products they sell. And in the end, its still the user who is getting screwed. It's not like Spotify or any other provider is eating the platform cost, they charge it up to the user by making their services more expensive.
Also, in their defense in the EU hearings Apple argued that Spotify's success is in large part thanks to the App Store, so it would only be fair for them to pay that amount. The amount of arrogance in that statement is astonishing imho. Developing for a platform is a mutually beneficial relationship, not an altruistic development aid by Apple. What would iPhone sales look like if there was no third party Mail client, no Twitter app and no Instagram or Facebook for their phones?
TD;DR: easy demonstration of how Apple makes more money selling the same product, not because they're more efficient but because they make all the rules.