Please write your legislators and demand antitrust action against Apple and Google for the following:
- Lack of One-Tap Web Installs (without scare walls or buried settings menus). This is the biggest stranglehold they have. Web installs can be done safely and securely via app signing, permissions, and signature blacklists.
- First-party defaults for all the platform pieces: Messaging, Payments, Photos, Music, Media, Navigation, etc. Every single one of these lets Apple and Google squeeze another industry and forces us into a pit of no-innovation.
- Default search, in the case of Google, which ropes you into their search / ads funnel. They've also bought it out on Apple's end.
- Default browser tech, in the case of Apple. It prevents innovation on app runtimes and deployment and forces you to develop using Apple technologies.
Winning the mobile rights battle will not only liberate us from the "promo cycle" plague, it'll stop the tax on innovation and introduce healthy competition.
If American legislators and the DOJ / FTC won't act, then every other country should. If enough countries put pressure on Apple and Google, we'll start to see competition reemerge. Right now it's impossible to develop a new smartphone entrant. Even Meta and Microsoft with their nearly-unlimited capital couldn't fight off Apple and Google.
YCombinator would probably be happy if smartphones became open platforms. They'd see healthier margins for startups and less direct platform competition. a16z is pushing for this. Just because Apple and Google were there first twenty years ago shouldn't give them an eternity to rule the entire category.