Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges

There is a lot of corruption in the US. So yes, at times, they will allow that too. But in this case, the commenter was correct.

We can't be going into courts of law making poop up. Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices. Judges and attorneys are not being corrupt bribe-takers when they laugh us out of court for making that argument. They are just following the law. There's not corruption involved.

People seem loathe to accept the fact that it's time to go the other route, where you just change the laws. Apple is not now, and realistically, probably never will be, a monopoly. Antitrust and monopoly laws do not address what Apple is, and it's time to either make laws that do address what Apple is, or just be honest and say we don't, as a legal system, have any issue with what Apple is.

But this political theater where you make an issue of what Apple is, and then try to address it in court knowing that it won't work is getting really old. We need some leaders who will actually write some new laws and put them up for a vote.

> Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly"

Usually courts don't care about their global market share but their local market share, which IIRC in the US for mobile was somewhere in the 60%. Whether that is enought to make a monopoly claim is debatable, but I assume it is enough to argue abuse of dominant market position.

Regarding your laws paragraph, I do agree that "free market" doesn't really work at the level that the US currently is. There are a lot of problems I have with how the market in the US is regulated (or rather lack thereof), but I don't live there but in the EU, which I honestly am glad of.

The Brown Shoe Company merger in the 1960s was shot down, even though it would only control around 7% of the nation’s shoe supply.

It’s important to not just consider the quantitative impact of the monopolist (percent of market share) but also the qualitative components (is it vertically integrated? is it hurting consumers?).

I’m not sure whether or not Apple is a monopolist, but I certainly think there are some arguments.

Yup, and at the time of the Paramount Decree the movie studios had 17% of theaters and 45% of film revenue. And that was across 5 independent studios.

Apple has over 50% of smartphone marketshare in the U.S. and over 60% of mobile app revenue.

US Antitrust law generally is about pricing, collusion (over pricing or market access), and competition more so than just monopoly power. It is straight up not illegal to be a monopoly, only to abuse the position.

I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts at a "tying" argument against Apple's App Store and their platforms, but I'm also not a lawyer. It has what looks like a pretty clear, long history of being considered an anti-competitive practice by the courts. You can buy a Brother printer and not have to buy paper or toner from them, why should I have to buy my apps from Apple? And to be clear, that is precisely how Apple thinks of the relationship between the user and the app. Apple owns that relationship. They mediate. They manage. They facilitate. No one else. Users don't buy apps. Users pay Apple. Apple pays the app developers.

> I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts at a "tying" argument against Apple's App Store and their platforms, but I'm also not a lawyer. It has what looks like a pretty clear, long history of being considered an anti-competitive practice by the courts.

Epic tried to make this argument in court and failed, mostly because tying is generally not illegal if the consumer is aware of the tie when purchasing and has the option to purchase an alternative product without such a tie.

In other words it would be absolutely legal for Brother to sell a printer that only uses Brother-branded paper and toner, because if you don't like those restrictions you can simply go and purchase a non-Brother printer instead.

The real answer is just don't use apples stuff. The fact that you can fairly trivially just get an android phone and a windows/Linux computer and do pretty much everything demonstrates that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on anything.

I was an iPhone guy. Switching to Android was honestly trivial.

Apples biggest crime IMO is doing everything possible to hide the 30% tax from common knowledge, not that they charge it.

> Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices.

Market share is irrelevant, though. As we can see in this article, the ability to force an unrelated business to transform its business model to fit your needs is monopoly power.

Literally majority control has never been a requirement to be a monopoly.

How is that insulting to the judge? If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market and exercise monopoly-like control. Especially considering all the colluding occurring.

* If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market*

Not if your competitor, android, controls 70% of the market.

That's what I meant about being insulting. In court, when we're making these kinds of claims, we shouldn't talk about what could be, we must talk about what is.

70% worldwide. 30-40% in the US.

And "Android" is a bunch of companies, not one.

Google Play Store is one company.

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