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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

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...

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.

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.

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

Duopoly

'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 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?

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?

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.

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com