Comment by ggreer
1 day ago
Apple and Google make apps exclusive all the time. They just do it by acquiring the company that developed the app, then integrating the app's functionality into their OS. Examples for iOS include Siri, Dark Sky, Shazam, and Workflow. Google did it with Waze, and failed with Sparrow, Quickoffice, and a bunch of others. Samsung did it with LoopPay (which became Samsung Pay) and Viv (from the developers of Siri), which they turned into Bixby.
I wouldn't consider most of those exclusives but company titles. They also exist on the console world but are a different concept (like Halo for example)
I'm unaware of a single contract where Google or Apple paid some money to a company to keep the exclusivity like what happens on console.