Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets.
This is from the Yahoo article:
"The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."
Setting aside that this is looking at the wrong side of the market like often happens in these discussions, what do you as a consumer do when Android or Huawei do something else that's a deal breaker for you?
The irony is that smaller American companies stand the most to benefit from EU DMA, including startups. Stripe could offer deeper payment integration without the Apple cut. You could start an indie game store. And Garmin can make better sport watches with better integration.
Literally every single company that transacts with consumers through digital purchases currently subject to Apple/Google tax is a beneficiary. If you believe in the power of the free market then lower fees for them will mean lower prices for us.
20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release:
> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
>
> The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate.
This has nothing to do with smartphones specifically, it applies equally well to anything in the AppStore ecosystem.
The problem is if you go for a free market "vote with their wallets" approach, you end up with a problem like the US did with Microsoft having too high of a market share and control on browsers, media players and operating systems.
Customers can only really vote with their wallets when there is choice and no de facto standard. On top of that, many consumers don't really understand that things like their privacy and and choice has been taken away from them.
I do not agree with all parts of the DMA and I think it's overbearing in some areas but also lacklustre in others but I do think it's important that we don't let monopolies control our lives.
> if Europe actually produced a company with the innovation and scale of Apple.
Except a functional society does not need companies "the scale of Apple" to work.
In fact it's probably the opposite : nobody can beat Apple or Google because they already have too much power worldwide.
Even in the US, where is the free market ? Nobody can create a company that will compete with Apple or Google. Sure, there was an open window for new competitors in the capitalism game in the 90-2010 era with the rise of the home computing but now everything is locked up again.
A functionnal society doesn't need huge actors, it only needs an environment where companies that win the capitalism game don't become trusts and where small companies can shine.
I don't want an european alternative to Apple, I want an ecosystem of companies that specializes in what they are good at and that are forced to work together to be interoperable.
It's hard to make informed choices and vote with your wallet when you're unaware of alternatives. Apple's ban on even mentioning competing options tries to preserve this information gap to the detriment of its customers.
Well.. ish. But really it started with iPhone. I've used those Nokia "smartphones". They were less the start of the smartphone revolution than PalmPilot or the IBM PC.
It didn't start with the iPhone. What the iPhone brought was a different interface and user experience.
For the rest, Nokia's "dumb phones" already had MP3 players and all sorts of media (games, videos), downloadable apps, access to the internet, photos, and video recording. They only lacked touch interfaces.
Of course, this was done along with other manufacturers like Sony Ericson, Motorola, Samsung etc.
The behavior of people walking around with media in their phones and using their phones to consume media, capture media and access the internet on-the-go was built by those brands, not by the iPhone.
And this demand and behavior wasn't built with anything like Palm Pilots or the IBM PC, but with regular popular phones - for example, the Motorola Razr line, the Nokia Xpress line, and the Sony Ericson Walkman were products that were launched around 2003-2006, which built these social behaviors.
Things like capturing photos/video, sharing photos and music, and playing multiplayer games were the standard thing to do in my teens with these devices. I only got my first modern smartphone around 2012/2013.
It's undeniable that the iPhone broke the mold with its user interface and experience, which became the standard for UI/UX, but the demand and consumer behavior weren't built by Apple, not even close. They just surfed the wave with a better product.
Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets.
This is from the Yahoo article:
"The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."
You can buy an android or huawei phone. Just because the ecosystem you like to use doesn't have certain features doesn't make it a monopoly.
Setting aside that this is looking at the wrong side of the market like often happens in these discussions, what do you as a consumer do when Android or Huawei do something else that's a deal breaker for you?
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Apple can also exit the EU market if they don't want to comply with the law.
Just because the regulation doesn't suit its business model doesn't make it mandatory to be present in a given market.
You can leave the market if you dont like the rules of the market.
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Or I can buy an iPhone and Apple doesn’t break the law :)
Switching from one duopoly to another isn't choice.
The irony is that smaller American companies stand the most to benefit from EU DMA, including startups. Stripe could offer deeper payment integration without the Apple cut. You could start an indie game store. And Garmin can make better sport watches with better integration.
The first beneficiary is likely to be Epic, since this is basically what they were asking for in the Fortnite lawsuit.
Literally every single company that transacts with consumers through digital purchases currently subject to Apple/Google tax is a beneficiary. If you believe in the power of the free market then lower fees for them will mean lower prices for us.
Because in a case of monopoly, the people can not vote with their wallet.
Except the smartphone market isn't a monopoly.
20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release:
> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases. > > The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate.
This has nothing to do with smartphones specifically, it applies equally well to anything in the AppStore ecosystem.
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The United States regularly spies and throws federal lawfare at European companies.
E.g: Alstom
So I wouldn't consider the playing field to be fair in the first place.
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30 years ago maybe. 20 years ago there was a European monopolist which was killed off by Microsoft alumni who sold it to Microsoft.
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I mean microsoft paid off the CEO of nokia to sink it.
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If Apple don’t like the EU regulations, they’re free to vote with their wallets and stop selling their products there.
The problem is if you go for a free market "vote with their wallets" approach, you end up with a problem like the US did with Microsoft having too high of a market share and control on browsers, media players and operating systems.
Customers can only really vote with their wallets when there is choice and no de facto standard. On top of that, many consumers don't really understand that things like their privacy and and choice has been taken away from them.
I do not agree with all parts of the DMA and I think it's overbearing in some areas but also lacklustre in others but I do think it's important that we don't let monopolies control our lives.
> if Europe actually produced a company with the innovation and scale of Apple.
Except a functional society does not need companies "the scale of Apple" to work.
In fact it's probably the opposite : nobody can beat Apple or Google because they already have too much power worldwide.
Even in the US, where is the free market ? Nobody can create a company that will compete with Apple or Google. Sure, there was an open window for new competitors in the capitalism game in the 90-2010 era with the rise of the home computing but now everything is locked up again.
A functionnal society doesn't need huge actors, it only needs an environment where companies that win the capitalism game don't become trusts and where small companies can shine.
I don't want an european alternative to Apple, I want an ecosystem of companies that specializes in what they are good at and that are forced to work together to be interoperable.
It's hard to make informed choices and vote with your wallet when you're unaware of alternatives. Apple's ban on even mentioning competing options tries to preserve this information gap to the detriment of its customers.
Do you realize that the smartphone revolution started here with Nokia?
Well.. ish. But really it started with iPhone. I've used those Nokia "smartphones". They were less the start of the smartphone revolution than PalmPilot or the IBM PC.
It didn't start with the iPhone. What the iPhone brought was a different interface and user experience.
For the rest, Nokia's "dumb phones" already had MP3 players and all sorts of media (games, videos), downloadable apps, access to the internet, photos, and video recording. They only lacked touch interfaces.
Of course, this was done along with other manufacturers like Sony Ericson, Motorola, Samsung etc.
The behavior of people walking around with media in their phones and using their phones to consume media, capture media and access the internet on-the-go was built by those brands, not by the iPhone.
And this demand and behavior wasn't built with anything like Palm Pilots or the IBM PC, but with regular popular phones - for example, the Motorola Razr line, the Nokia Xpress line, and the Sony Ericson Walkman were products that were launched around 2003-2006, which built these social behaviors.
Things like capturing photos/video, sharing photos and music, and playing multiplayer games were the standard thing to do in my teens with these devices. I only got my first modern smartphone around 2012/2013.
It's undeniable that the iPhone broke the mold with its user interface and experience, which became the standard for UI/UX, but the demand and consumer behavior weren't built by Apple, not even close. They just surfed the wave with a better product.
2 replies →