Comment by jeswin
6 days ago
I'm totally fine with this, but I wish they would do the same thing with Apple. Google's platform, at the very least is open and I can run my own apps.
One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?". In my view it is, since you can't have a business or build connected hardware without an iOS app. And as for abusing that position for gaining market share, there are just too many examples starting with say, watches.
Apple doesn't have a similar position in any space though, or do they? In terms of market share they're not even the biggest player in the smartphone market, they sit below 20 % (the most profitable 20 % though).
Google, in comparison, absolutely dominates the search and ad markets and sucks all oxygen out of them to keep any competition from springing up by controlling distribution and limiting choice. They e.g. paid vast amounts of money to Apple to make sure users don't get a free choice of search engine.
If you wanted to compare the Apple Watch with this it would mean that Apple would make exclusive deals with all stores (online and IRL) selling watches so that consumers would only see Apple watches everywhere they go and would need to look in the basement or on an obscure subpage to find any watches from a different manufacturer. Clearly that's not the case.
That said I'm not a fan of Apples walled garden either, I think this should be addressed (and in the EU it is being addressed). It's ridiculous to have this super powerful hardware and I can only run sanctioned apps on them instead of being able to install any kind of software I like.
Apple has 57% of the US phone market: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/us-smartphone-market-share
just because they have a high percentage, it doesn't mean they should be pushed to divest it. Google is likely found to be severely abusing it's powers beyond what you can actually see on the surface
> Apple doesn't have a similar position in any space though, or do they?
Apple has exclusive control over a market (AppStore), which has almost 2 million different products (Apps), 820,000 suppliers (app publishers) and over 1.3 billion customers (active iPhone users) which conducts more trade ($1.1 trillion) than the entire GDP of Luxemburg.
If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.
The relevant market for them is smartphones and smartphone apps, and again, Apple doesn't have a monopoly there. Most markets have concentration effects and players that dominate the market to a certain degree, that doesn't automatically make them a monopolist, it depends on how they got there and what exactly they do to keep or build out their position in the market. By your definition Valve is a monopolist in the gaming market due to their size and dominance, but that's likely not true either.
Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones e.g. by entering into exclusivity deals with cell service providers or electronics stores so that you could only find Apple products there (i.e. T-Mobile would only sell iPhones with their contracts and you wouldn't find any Android phones except in some small speciality shops out of town). That's what Google is doing in its markets among other things, i.e. pay tons of money to ensure all virtual store fronts are only stocked with Google products and everything else is hidden behind.
Apple does of course show anti-competitive behavior to a degree, i.e. they purchase the entire production capacity of the most advanced semiconductor fabs to have exclusivity and preserve their edge, but again there are still other players in that market and competition still seems possible. If you want to compare that to what Google is doing in the search and ad space it would translate to them locking up almost all semiconductor suppliers in exclusivity contracts for 10 years so that no other company could ever build any advanced chips in large numbers.
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> Apple has exclusive control over a market (AppStore)
Epic tried to make this case already, but the judge ruled that the App Store is not a market that Apple can have a monopoly over.
While those are big numbers, determining if a company has a monopoly requires looking at the numbers and market share of competing companies as well.
Yes, Apple has exclusive control over the Apple ecosystem. I'm sure a lot of Apple users would like greater control over their devices.
But the choice isn't between Apple and not having a phone. Android exists, and as long as its a viable choice, Apple isn't a monopoly.
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The argument as to whether smartphones or the Apple App Store is the better definition of a market has been done to death at this point, right? IMO it would be more good faith to just reference the fact that this is a currently entrenched and impossible to reconcile matter of… opinion? Definition?
> If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.
This level of certainty is not warranted.
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This is why regulators prefer talking about dominant position rather than just market share.
I think a lot of people aren't aware that monopolies are not illegal in the US. It is completely legal to run a business that is a monopoly.
What is illegal are anti-competitive practices that a business might employ in an attempt to create or maintain a monopoly. A business that violates these laws might already be a monopoly, or it might not be one.
> It's ridiculous to have this super powerful hardware and I can only run sanctioned apps on them instead of being able to install any kind of software I like.
Buy different hardware then. You know these things when you buy the device. It isn't a secret. If the device doesn't meet your needs, there are alternatives that do. The fact that there are adequately substitutable products available other than iPhone destroys any concept of "monopoly." Saying Apple has a monopoly on iOS is ridiculous -- they _are_ iOS.
> they're not even the biggest player in the smartphone market
I think worldwide numbers are skewing your data there, for antitrust only the US numbers matter and those are 59% for Apple on mobile.
There’s a similar antitrust lawsuit against Apple: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5119948/a-look-at-the-d...
These things take a long time, though. I think the Apple one is just not as far along.
> One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?"
I opened my local configurator to buy a 13" M3 MacBook Air.
Textbook monopolistic price gouging.
Aston Martin charges $1000 to add a six CD changer in the trunk of Vanquish.
Clearly textbook price gouging from the monopolistic auto manufacturer, Aston Martin.
Aston Martin doesn’t sell enough cars to be a problem for society. Apple has pretty high market share. I don’t really think they are a monopoly (because I can’t see the point of view that takes a single Apple Store as “the market”), but I think it is obvious that they have more impact than Aston Martin.
Apple monitor stand: $999
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MWUG2LL/A/pro-stand
Nobody needs an Aston Martin to perform well enough at their job. I've been in multiple situations where being a Linux user put me at a disadvantage because everything else at a company assumes Apple.
Granted, the appropriate response is to demand a Mac from this company, but it still highlights that a Mac isn't a luxury item the same way an Aston Martin is
> Textbook monopolistic price gouging
So they’re a monopoly because you can only buy Apple laptops from them?
Yes they are a monopoly on the MacOS hardware market, which explains this kind of extractive behavior.
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You’re free to purchase a Dell, then.
Not if you work for a local council or whatever, and need to develop an iOS app for some reason.
Then you pay, because they basically force you to use their hardware, software, connectors, formats, billing services, etc every step of the way.
Apple has a monopoly on usable trackpads.
No, that's textbook price discrimination, aka standard pricing everywhere. Have you looked at the prices for add-ons for cars? Or even for pizza toppings?
There's no world in which you can tell me Apple has a monopoly on laptops. C'mon.
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42057758
Apple are creating a walled marketing garden with their new privacy features too. If a person pays for iCloud storage of any time they get placed onto the Apple VPN and their IP address resolves one of two or three different values for any given country.
This makes web tracking and attribution impossible to anyone who is not Apple. Users might be happy with it but I think it is similar anti-competitive behaviour to what Google are doing.
The App Store is one consideration, and the hardware ecosystem another. I personally think both are problems. The ability to cast audio from my device to another is less supported now than they were back when things had audio auxiliary jacks.
How so? Because you need to buy a converter cable?
That sounds like “marginally more expensive”, and certainly not a monopoly-abusing position.
Apple today discontinued the lightning to 3.5mm converters, but I’m more referring to things like the apple exclusive airplay, proprietary Bluetooth codecs, etc
Google abuses privacy in every product they own via their monopoly over the ad ecosystem. Very different to Apple.