Hacker News Reader

Comment by gtvwill | Hacker News Reader

It's price gouging. When you have a monopoly (your the only source of apps for an iphone and no the existence of android doesnt make apple not a monopoly) and your a hardware company. You've just hit the jackpot and literally charge whatever you want. Fingers crossed ACCC or the euros slap the company with some anti monopoly laws and force the monopoly to be split up. Separate hardware from software. Make hardware software agnostic. Fine the hell out of then for their anticompetitive actions and their just straight up negligent wasteful hardware design.

View on HN

While even if I agree, is Microsoft the right company to complain as far as XBox?

And making hardware “software agnostic” you end up with the crap like Android and Windows.

There is a reason that consoles exists - where the hardware and software are integrated

> the existence of android doesnt make apple not a monopoly

How come? User doesn't have to buy an iPhone. Many buy Androids exactly because Android has some apps that they want, so not only it is a competitive market, but it's also a market where this exact issue (whether certain apps are available) drives (in part) user decisions.

I think the main issue is: should the iOS app market be considered a "top-level", government-regulatable market by itself (just like the entire standard market for goods and services of all kinds in the world)?

I think it's unreasonable to see iOS apps as a market. It's part of mobile games market. Otherwise, you would have to arrest executives from any car company, because their car company usually has a monopoly grasp of "spare parts for cars of this company" market.

But spare parts and maintenance is something that many regulators pressure suppliers about, and for good reason. I feel like a lot of people (especially on HN) don't understand the role of regulation and how it can help the end user.

You are looking at the wrong market. Apple effectively sells places in their marketplace to the developers. Because of the market share[1] of that marketplace on B2C, developers don’t have other choice but to buy from Apple (i.e. pay the cut), so it is indeed a monopoly - on the B2B market.

[1] it is not just the number of iPhone users: if you don’t go to iOS marketplace, your sales on Android may also be impacted.

> Because of the market share of that marketplace on B2C, developers don’t have other choice but to buy from Apple (i.e. pay the cut)

I've been making mobile apps and games for a long time, and this is completely untrue. Developers choose a platform, Google play, iOS or both, very consciously. Other, smaller app stores (based on Android, mostly) also exist. If Google Play radically decreased it's fees, it would actually make a lot of developers to choose Android first.

The fact that it's rational for developers to release their apps on iOS doesn't mean they have no alternative or Apple has a monopoly. It just means it's still better for them to release on iOS than not, even with these fees. Microsoft it's not worth it for them is exactly how free market works. If some users want this cloud gaming enough, it will influence their Android/iOS buy decisions.

> If some users want this cloud gaming enough, it will influence their Android/iOS buy decisions.

This would be true if not for bundling.

Lets say users care about A, B, C .. all the way to Z. Apple makes G really suck, but do the others well and bundles everything so you have to purchase all of them together, now a competitor can't just go in and make a batter G they have to make a better A, B, C and everything else. This is typical anti competitive behavior and result in companies just seeking rent rather than working hard to compete and innovate.

Apple stores sucks because of this, it is really really bad compared to competitors on other platforms like PC, steam is a massively better product since users choose steam it isn't forced upon them by the computer creator.

> I've been making mobile apps and games for a long time, and this is completely untrue.

This may not be true for your business model because your product seems to be an app, but it is not „completely untrue“. Many businesses build apps merely as an interface to their product, but the product is something else. They cannot afford losing significant part of their target audience by being picky. They have to eat the costs and terms of all major stores and pretend to be happy about it. The main complaint about Apple is this one: you have to go mobile to support your sales, but you pay incredibly high tax on that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com