Comment by fidotron
5 days ago
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.
5 days ago
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.
This is like arguing McDonalds has a monopoly over food sold in McDonalds outlets, when you have a choice to not go into McDonalds.
This is:
1. Not about any monopoly (in fact the word "monopoly" does not appear in the press release at all).
2. Nothing like McDonalds, whose business model is completely different from an app store's.
3. Not about Apple can do to consumers who aren't in the Apple ecosystem but about what it can do to developers who wish to sell their applications and services for Apple devices.
If you really insist on making an analogy that involves McDonalds: that's like arguing that McDonalds should not be allowed to prevent Coca-Cola from telling Coca-Cola customers that they can buy Coca-Cola in places other than McDonalds. Which, yeah, they're not allowed to.
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The whole point of the DMA is clarifying that from the point of view of the European Union, operating a digital market on a platform is not actually like going to a McDonalds.
There is no argument to be made by analogy here. The DMA always was clear regarding what constitutes a digital market and what the obligations of the companies operating them would be. If Apple is unhappy about that, they are free to stop operating the App Store in the EU.
6 replies →
This metaphor doesn't quite work because McDonalds aren't a marketplace. But the closest I can think of is if McDonalds sold the best hamburger boxes that people want to use at home, but then added a mechanism that only lets you put a burger in that box if whoever made that burger bribed MacDonalds, regardless of what's good for you as the burger consumer.
1 reply →
Except that there are hundreds of other food options while there are only two realistic options for smartphones, neither of which is cooking at home. The tight control has benefits - Apple’s App Store is much safer than letting your parents install stuff they find on the internet - but there’s a real downside which needs regulation to balance.
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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.
With a lot of help/pressure from banks and rich traitors/politicans (https://www.marianne.net/economie/economie-francaise/dans-le...).
They mostly use our corruption against us, whis seems fair since it appears a big part of our population like protecting corrupt politicians/criminals
30 years ago maybe. 20 years ago there was a European monopolist which was killed off by Microsoft alumni who sold it to Microsoft.
No, Sony Ericsson was way more successful than the attempts to revise history like to portray.
The vision of what to do with the more powerful technology was also better than Nokia, though still not as good as Apple. The whole direction Nokia kept dragging Series 60 in was a dead end, almost from the very start.
Edit to add: example of what I'm referring to with S60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3650 . Just complete madness. Who would waste time on this?
I mean microsoft paid off the CEO of nokia to sink it.
Nokia was worthless by that point.
Even had they run with a wild pivot to Android it would have required the strategic vision to also build an Android app store, which would have upset the various European telcos that made a few extra euros that way.
> Nokia was worthless by that point.
Not according to the value of their stocks.