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Comment by shiroiushi | Hacker News Reader

>android has a huge market share on mobile.

Not in the US they don't; it's a minority share, split across many different manufacturers who all have their own flavor of Android, their own (crappy) app stores and pre-loaded crapware apps, etc. Apple has a clear majority of the US smartphone market (and it's a vertical monopoly, with Apple controlling the phone hardware and the app store and not allowing any alternatives), but no one's looking at breaking them up.

>I think these two being open source is a major reason why they have been so successfully adopted.

iOS isn't open-source, and it has a commanding majority of the US smartphone market.

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If these measurements are correct, iOS has about 11% more of the US market share than Android.

This is very different from the global market share, where Android has 45% more.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ios-vs-android-market-s...

Majority of revenue base lives on iOS globally (due to being a monopoly in the US)

That's why Apple has higher profits than all other mobile operators combined!

I thought the higher revenue was because Apple charges more for everything, and the people who buy Apple products are also more likely to purchase other things, driving product for app store etc. (based on some study I saw many years back that is probably out of date by now)

iOS isn’t a monopoly.

>This is very different from the global market share, where Android has 45% more.'

This case is about US antitrust law, so what happens outside US borders isn't really that important, except as far as it affects the companies' revenues and profits. Supposedly, the actions of any antitrust action are to protect consumers/the general public, but what that really means is consumers in the US. Consumers outside the US are irrelevant. And the simple fact is that, by your own numbers, consumers in the US are mostly using iOS, not Android.

If anti-trust action in the US results in the break-up of Google, it affects users worldwide, not just in the US.

Regardless, 42% (in the US) is still a huge market share. Huge doesn't have to mean majority or even plurality.

Correct. "Huge" in the case of antitrust matters is big enough to act anti-competitively. It's much more broad than you think, and it sees a lion share of litigation done by the Feds.

For example, there's currently an ongoing anti trust case against "Al’s Asphalt Paving Company"

https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-v-als-asphalt-paving-com...

> "Huge" in the case of antitrust matters is big enough to act anti-competitively.

With the extra clarification that just the size of the company or its market share aren't in and of themselves enough to constitute a crime. It's how the company acts once it has that power that constitutes the crime.

You could be a huge company, or dominate a market and still not run afoul of anti-competitive laws because you didn't abuse the position [0]. The abuse of position particularly (or only, depending on jurisdiction probably) if it brings harm to consumers is what lands a company in hot water.

[0] https://thehustle.co/originals/the-worlds-cutest-monopoly

> Not in the US they don't

I'm not sure in what world 42% isn't huge when it comes to market share. iOS having a majority isn't really relevant to this point.

And regardless, GP didn't say "in the US"; globally, they are far ahead of iOS. Sure, this anti-trust action is a US matter, but a break-up would absolutely affect Google globally.

Windows isn’t open source. Perhaps Office and Windows should be broken up? They have far more market share comparatively speaking. The fact that most of the enterprise run on Microsoft could be more concerning than an consumer App Store.

That would have been nice 20+ years ago, back when the US tried it, but the government shut it down just as soon as Bush took office.

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