Comment by hug
1 day ago
Apple has a monopoly on distributing apps to iPhones. That is a true statement, using the real meaning of monopoly, and is being used correctly.
You can disagree with whether or not that statement is a "real issue", in that you can buy a completely different phone and install apps provided by other vendors, but it doesn't take away any truthiness from the initial statement.
From my perspective, though, that monopoly is a real issue. Some 55% of the adult US population own an iPhone. A monopoly in a market made up of the majority of the US populace should be thoroughly examined.
I really don’t get why people are so bent out of shape about iPhones being a closed ecosystem.
But I am a game developer and console app distribution requires laborious requirements to ship anything meaningful, it’s just an ordinary part of playing the game.
Ironically: all our games end up being better* optimised for all platforms because of the requirements and accessibility is not an afterthought. But hell, is it arbitrary sometimes to get a cert pass and it is definitely frustrating.
Consoles are a monopoly too and I hope governments go after them next.
Then I'd like you to give me an example of any company which is not a monopoly, with that same logic.
Google does not have a monopoly on distributing apps on Android phones.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on distributing software on Windows.
Hell, Apple itself does not have a monopoly on distributing software on MacOS.
Really, you could say the same about, AFAICT, every single major operating system that has ever existed, other than iOS.
> Google does not have a monopoly on distributing apps on Android phones.
> Microsoft does not have a monopoly on distributing software on Windows.
It's a different degree but both control who can effectively distribute software on their platforms to some extend. Google does at lot to make outside the app store a miserable experience and Microsoft has a nice protection racket where if you don't play by their rules and pay the fees your software might just get deleted from your customers systems.
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Sure, the example is any company that doesn't run a market, and any company where its marketplace is fungible with another marketplace. AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
The monopoly that Apple controls is not Apple's goods, it's the control of the sale of goods of other vendors to consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple. The consumers are the people who would have to spend $1,000 to switch to a different market, and then have to re-purchase every good they'd purchased from the previous market.
It's not like Walmart, where the consumer can walk across the road to Target and buy the exact same thing at a similar price. Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I would also, in a general sense, suggest that in the only obvious direct competitor market, Google does not exert monopoly power, because you can install F-Droid as an alternate marketplace. They are anti-competitive in other ways, though, to your earlier point.
> consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple
A comparable choice would be to use a telephone from another maker. And they come for much less than $1000.
> Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I'm imagining it, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Apple or Google or their conduct. When I buy a new car, any old accessories I have purchased for the old car will obviously not fit.
> AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
Same for Apple. Vendors are free to develop for several platforms and users are free to have cell phones of different marks.
In this particular subject of search engines, Apple and Google have acted in an anticompetitive way with the bribe payments. That doesn't have much to do with monopolies.