Comment by sah2ed
8 years ago
You are correct if you believe the term "adjacent market" represents an actual thing.
If you do not believe it is an actual thing, then an adjacent market is no more real than a map is real. An adjacent market is merely just a mental aid, it is not somewhere you or I can schedule a visit to.
At the end of the day, a hypothetical Apple monopoly in the "smartphone market" would mean consumers would have less money to spend on other things like google search (to use your example), apps & games, Netflix subscriptions, etc all of which exist in "adjacent markets".
My gripe is that the use of jargon here is very misleading as it has lead you and others to conclude that there is a dichotomy -- between a market and its adjacent(s), where none exists in the real world where all of this matters.
I think it was meant more in the sense that Apple would have a lock on phone users, which would let them monetize access to them for others such as google. They would also have been able to be more influential as an ad company.
They already do charge for making google the default browser, so it's not a stretch to imagine this payment would be larger and other similar payments would exist. I'm not sure why you think this is a hypothetical when it already happens.