Comment by firesteelrain
1 day ago
So if Google closed sourced their OS and access to their store is only via their OS, is that anti competitive ?
Trying to figure out the argument.
As opposed to Apple, Android is free and open like you said. It’s the Google Play Store that has limited access.
Apple never pretended iOS is free and available to all other phone manufacturer. It was always a main selling point for Apple phone.
Google killed competition by first making a free operating system that all phone manufacturer could use, lowering their production cost, and when competitor like windows phone or Samsung tyzen died, slowly tightened his grip by pushing more and more core feature in their third party services, hence forcing manufacturer to agree to their terms if they want to have a play store, Google pay service or just pass play integrity so that bank app can run.
That’s in my opinion completely different strategies, one is fair, the other is deceptive and manipulative.
Windows Phone was not killed by Google offering a free OS. Microsoft chose to charge a licence for it[0]. And every Android handset requires (or required) the manufacturer to pay Microsoft licence fees of about the same amount, so the cost to the OEM wouldn't have been that different.
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/ZTE-exec-reveals-how-much-th...