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Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

>For App Store apps that link out of the app to complete purchases, the commission will be 15 percent. Developers in the programs mentioned above will pay a reduced rate of 10 percent.

This is one of the most 'evil' policies I've simply ever heard of. I know today it's not even allowed to mention it, but it seems like the most slam dunk monopoly abuse possible. The damage to customers is clear, a company could charge 15% less and receive the same amount if they were simply 'allowed' to tell customers to go to their site. Somehow Fortnite did exactly this, got banned for it, and it still wasn't enough to put an end to it.

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Which monopoly is Apple abusing?

EU law doesn't actually require a monopoly for competition rules to apply, it's a "dominant position". Apple certainly meets that definition for smartphone platforms.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/competit...

Sure, but ApolloFortyNine described Apple’s behavior as “slam dunk monopoly abuse”. A monopoly is not a dominant position, it’s an overwhelmingly dominant one.

If you want to distribute mobile apps and reach all users - something that is required for any kind or collaborative app - you MUST support iPhone in the western world. In fact, it’s often iPhone first, Android second.

And on the iPhone, you MUST use the Apple App Store, not just as a means to distribute your app, but as your payment provider. You can’t collect payment details yourself, use Stripe, Paddle, anything. You MUST use Apple.

You simply cannot enter business without paying Apple a share. That’s a monopoly.

Geez even the EU's own government websites are polluted with cookie banners. Apparently they can't resist tracking their visitors either.

Install uBlock Origin and enable the Cookie Notices and Annoyances lists in the Filter Lists settings.

Apple isn't "dominant" in any geography and in the EU specifically Android has much greater market share.

Apple and google essentially own 99%+ of the smartphone market, so it's not that different from a monopoly

Duopoly

Exactly

'Monopoly' is the wrong term. It's abuse of market power.

Distribution of software on iOS?

That isn't one by law.

Which law? Seems like it is under EU law.

Any country in the world with working democracy, there is a very precise definition of what monopoly is.

> In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.[3] Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).[3]

All countries with a working democracy would class Apple as a monopoly as it has significant market power, enough to distort prices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

Not for the nerd definition of iOS as a market.

The market is mobile devices.

A market is the set of things which are fungible substitutes for each other. Essentially every brand of gasoline is in the same market. By contrast, gasoline and diesel are separate markets, because some vehicles require gasoline and can't use diesel and others the other way around. They're not substitutes when your vehicle can only use one of them and you can't get out of it by trying to claim that the market is all types of fuel.

Now suppose you have an iPhone and want to download an app, or want to distribute your app to customers many of which have an iPhone. What substitute for Apple's store is available to do that?

The Play Store on Android.

More specifically your question is like asking what if you have a car that requires diesel, what substitute is available to let you use cheaper gasoline?

I must have missed when I could install Android apps on iOS (if Apple actually allowed users to install their own software there's a 99% chance this would exist by now funnily enough).

Yea defining the market is 95% of anti trust cases. But asking yourself 'if Microsoft did what Apple is doing' should be enough to show at some point, it is a market.

> More specifically your question is like asking what if you have a car that requires diesel, what substitute is available to let you use cheaper gasoline?

It's like asking what the available substitute is for diesel fuel from Shell, to which the answer is diesel fuel from Chevron, BP, Sunoco, etc.

So now what are the available substitutes for distributing apps to devices that require iOS apps and can't run Android apps?

The same way you have a Playstation and don't want to pay Sony for the game.

I don't understand what makes people think Sony should get a pass here either. If you want to port Blender to PlayStation so people who buy a PlayStation can use it for 3D modeling then what business of that is Sony's?

We aren't talking about nerd definitions. We are talking about the real world.

Apple can change their rules and it materially impacts the market.

The real world is that outside US, Apple hardly has a monopoly in mobile phones.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358814

iPhone apps.

If it helps, think if Windows apps had a 5% Microsoft tax and had to be approved by Apple.

I assume you mean approved by Microsoft.

When they were found in the US to have a monopoly, they had around 95% of personal computer operating system share. Apple isn’t even close.

Just because they took too long to look at a problem, does not stop something else from being a problem.

Really? What would you estimate is Apple's market share of iPhone apps if it's so far below 95%?

We both know that the market share refers to the smartphone market share of which Apple has about 21%.

For iPhone apps Apple is way behind with about 0.005% of the total 2.17 million iPhone apps.

The ONLY interesting market share here isn't how many apps Apple create, or how large share of the smartphones they have. It's how much of the distribution of apps they control on iOS (which easily reaches the bar of being a market in itself).

I.e. the monopoly question is: if apple takes X% for each app in this market, and a competitor can't take less, then it's a monopoly.

The only interesting market is comments labels as from alkonaut and if no one else can make such a comment, that is monopoly that should be regulated.

Yes indeed if this wad important enough in people’s lives or the economy as a whole I should be regulated, divided or possibly even nationalized.

Why should Apple develop XCode and distribute apps for these developers to iPhones for free?

Are you willing to pay the storage and bandwidth costs for Fortnite since Epic apparently can’t afford to?

You're creating strawmen here, but it's funny you mention Epic since, yes, they were more than willing to do that, and they have done that. As soon as they were allowed to do so.

Of course Apple will close the Store and make apps impossible if they could not extract their fee. That was the plan with the original iPhone and HTML only web apps in its browser. Then they got a more profitable idea.

For the apps to go away the store for free must be imposed on Apple, Google and everybody else but I don't think it will ever happen. If it will, people will use the browser and that would be enough. Some JS APIs will be dismissed, some hardware will be removed, some functionality will become impossible and slowly forgotten. Nobody will cry too much and business and entertainment as usual.

Unfortunately xcode and app distribution is mandated by apple. Using cryptographic keys they stand in the way of "owners" of phones from loading non-apple-approved software.

even the name "sideloading" has come into being. When the PC first came out it was just "running".

I just don’t get the outrage. If you made HATS and wanted to sell them at STORE, do you think you get to just walk into STORE and tell the manager/owner:

1) find some space on the shelf and your stock room to put my stuff! 2) I don’t have a store with shelves or visiting customers, but you will sell this for me at 0% profit!

You’re paying for sales access to millions of devices with frictionless checkout.

And you want to… make it harder to check out? Because you think you’re entitled sell things to their user base?

No one wants to go to your website. You’re crazy.

Agree.

However, in this scenario every neighbourhood only has 2 STORES - and each CUSTOMER only shops at one of these STORES.

Then, if you made HATS, the only way to sell HATS is to get them on the shelves of both those stores.

This is Australia: two major supermarkets - so the only way to sell a lot of your product is to submit to the terms of Coles or Woolworths.

You're forgetting some detail in your example, which is that

1. the existing STORES also sell almost all the CARS, and the GPS in these cars is hardcoded to only drive to one of their STORES

2. The government is considering a law that forces everyone to show their ID to open the door and drive their CAR,

3. To enfore #2, the government is considering a law to prevent drivers from manually entering GPS coordinates to any other stores, because the two existing STORES promise to enforce the ID-verification system in their parking lots.

Now you want to sell your HAT, good luck, because anybody trying to open up a Hat-Droid store with your product in it, is soon legally prevented from doing so. For security purposes. Think of the children!

I think the fundamental thing here is that this isn't merely a store. The Apple ecosystem is large enough to BE a market in itself.

It's not about the market for apps, or the market for smartphones. Those markets are comparable to any market.

This is about the market for apps ON the apple ecosystem. And the problem that is being solved is: Apple can't have a monopoly on that market, such that they can (for example) charge a commission for every sale.

Basically: we can't allow a company to be so successful that their STORE becomes a MARKET.

You’re making a lot of statements here with no supporting argument.

Plenty of other companies manufacture hardware and run stores. If we’re going to say that isn’t allowed, then at least make the rule across the board.

How many new companies will be popping up to manufacture these types of devices? Not many.

I think the reality is that the EU sees an opportunity to apply some pressure on a few successful foreign companies, as that potentially provides them leverage in other negotiations, or at the very least some revenue from fines.

> Plenty of other companies manufacture hardware and run stores.

How does that matter? Are you suggesting we must treat a massive company the same as a not-massive company? Once they reach a certain size, they're at risk of being a monopoly. Until they do, they're not. This is just a matter of size.

Well I’m definitely going to suggest that you don’t understand the definition of the word monopoly, because it has nothing to do with “size”.

What I’m suggesting is that it’s at best sloppy, and at worst corrupt, to arbitrarily apply rules in the way the EU is doing. If you think it’s wrong for a hardware manufacturer to be the sole operator of an app or software store on their platform, that’s fine. Make your rule, apply it to everyone, and give people N years to come into compliance.

The reason the EU isn’t doing that in these cases is because they don’t want to apply these laws to EU companies, and it gives them leverage in negotiations with foreign companies.

At least try to make the situation comparable:

If you made HATS and sold them at a STORE (is the all caps thing legalese or why do we talk this this?), and the owner of BIGGEST HAT STORE walked into your STORE and told you:

"Nice STORE you have there! Would be a shame if something happened to all those HATS of yours. Pay us a five percent commission, otherwise your HATS will stop working."

We have a word for those situations, and any democratic society nip that particular type of entrepreneurship in the bud. It's just that we should have done something long before our pensions were dependent on these companies which are now too big to fail.

I guess we can all make up analogies that don’t resonate with other people?

You’re describing racketeering, and in your analogy, you have a store.

But in reality, you don’t have a store, so the hypothetical doesn’t make any sense.

Do you want to try rail lines? You want to ship your HATS on a freight TRAIN, but you don’t have a TRAIN or even a RAIL.

Do you think the rail owner or the freight train will carry your product for free?

But of course you have a store. That's the whole point and that's what you analogy missed. The point was to be able to sell services outside the Apple store, in another store.

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