Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%.
I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.
>Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly
True, and the reason is that a 30% UK-wide or a 50% Europe-wide market share can easily turn out to be a 100% market share in many local markets. Tesco defended itself by saying that 98% of consumers have access to five different super market chains within a drive time radius of 30 minutes. Make that a more realistic 10 minutes and the picture changes dramatically.
Let's imagine a hypothetical world where Company A owns 80% of the smartphone market and the rest is divided between the also-rans.
Now imagine that app developers can't profitably make a 1st rate app without getting the income from company A's app store (But can port the app to other OSes for extra income). If company A starts to use this situation to make it harder to port apps to other companies OSes via strongarm tactics, then company A is abusing its monopoly position of being the only profitable way to make an app.
Today's world is nothing like that, but it's an example of how near-total marketshare is not necessary for anti-trust to come into play. There is a certain point at which you have a large enough market share, that certain other players in the market must deal with you to get the volume needed to compete, particularly in high-volume, high-upfront cost industries (which many types of software qualify as).
Monopoly is not antitrust. Abusing control of a market is. A monopoly (which is usually considered to be dominance if a market place) is not itself unlawful.
I once saw an economics paper finding that if the top four players in a given market have more than 60% marketshare between them, they'll naturally act as a cartel. Ergo preserving an effective free market for consumers requires preventing that circumstance.
That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).
80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.
Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%.
I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.
>Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly
True, and the reason is that a 30% UK-wide or a 50% Europe-wide market share can easily turn out to be a 100% market share in many local markets. Tesco defended itself by saying that 98% of consumers have access to five different super market chains within a drive time radius of 30 minutes. Make that a more realistic 10 minutes and the picture changes dramatically.
How can anything other that 99% market share even be considered a monopoly? If it's 80% or 90% then there is obviously choice and thus no monopoly.
Anti trust is such bunk...
Here's an example:
Let's imagine a hypothetical world where Company A owns 80% of the smartphone market and the rest is divided between the also-rans.
Now imagine that app developers can't profitably make a 1st rate app without getting the income from company A's app store (But can port the app to other OSes for extra income). If company A starts to use this situation to make it harder to port apps to other companies OSes via strongarm tactics, then company A is abusing its monopoly position of being the only profitable way to make an app.
Today's world is nothing like that, but it's an example of how near-total marketshare is not necessary for anti-trust to come into play. There is a certain point at which you have a large enough market share, that certain other players in the market must deal with you to get the volume needed to compete, particularly in high-volume, high-upfront cost industries (which many types of software qualify as).
Monopoly is not antitrust. Abusing control of a market is. A monopoly (which is usually considered to be dominance if a market place) is not itself unlawful.
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I once saw an economics paper finding that if the top four players in a given market have more than 60% marketshare between them, they'll naturally act as a cartel. Ergo preserving an effective free market for consumers requires preventing that circumstance.
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Hasn't that always been the relationship between Microsoft and Apple in the desktop world?
That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).