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Ok? I feel like Apple is free to promote whatever they damn please on their own platform. Are we seriously criticizing a company for promoting their products ah

Ok? I feel like Apple is free to promote whatever they damn please on their own platform. Are we seriously criticizing a company for promoting their products ahead of 3rd party products on their own platform? and I mean, how much money do you think Apple is making from someone having their compass app downloaded? Seems like an inflammatory and in-genuine story.

Causality1 7y ago
The EU fined Microsoft six hundred million dollars just for including Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows by default. Apple's behavior is much worse than that.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Apple does not have a monopoly in the mobile phone market like Microsoft had in the operating system market. Microsoft also had a court order to comply with that they forgot about in Windows 7. https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commission-fine/ https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commi...
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Microsoft never had a monopoly in the OS market. Plenty of businesses large and small used competing OSs like Apple, Unix, Linux, Beos, OS/2, DOS, etc. Microsoft had a dominant market position, and anti-competitively leveraged that market position in operating systems to muscle its way into the internet browser market.
    - greedo 7y ago
      Windows had 97% marketshare. MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, DOS, the various *nixes and Linux were NOTHING in that market.
- jakear 7y ago
  IMO, that fine is (for lack of a better term) bullshit. Does Android present a browser selection to EU customers?
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    No, but there are at least three running or finished antitrust cases going against Google from the EU, for Google Shopping, AdSense and Android; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google for a summary.
- coldtea 7y ago
  How many times this old wives tale will have to be repeated till people understand what went on then, and how it's nothing like it's now? Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to 97%, in fact). Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes. The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way. That's the same reason why you can't legally force McDonalds to also sell Burger King burgers, or GAP to sell Banana Republic clothes... And even MS monopoly position wasn't the issue (having a monopoly naturally is not illegal). The issue was it used its monopoly position to threaten and bribe OEMs to not work with competitors.
  - m_ke 7y ago
    iOS revenue is 2x larger than android. There might be more cheap android phones out there but Apple has the majority of high income individuals.
    - vgetr 7y ago
      So...?
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Which is not relevant. Monopoly is defined on a market, not on income segments (and even if it mattered, still on the high income individuals iOS is hardly above say 70%). Someone could sell cars for $5K and have 99% of the car market in a small city of 1000 people, while another one sells a single car for 100M and has 20 times the other's revenue. It's still the cheap car guy that has the monopoly.
      - m_ke 7y ago
        Revenue based market share is more relevant than unit market share for most businesses. Apple pulls in 2/3 of the revenue in the mobile app ecosystem and gets to act as a gatekeeper between most consumer startups and their potential customers.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Ah, the old, "It's my football so I should always get to be quarterback" argument. I guess that works for a while.
- coldtea 7y ago
  It should work forever, as long you own the field, and people want to use said field because that gives them access to a huge marketplace of devices that you've built and sold. So there's that...
  - nixpulvis 7y ago
    You lost me with your analogy. Let me extend the pigskin thought exprement a bit. If I own the football team, and the field, and the city (hell, why not), then sure I can choose who plays QB, so I choose my son. Maybe at the start he's even not that bad of a QB, and our team wins some games. Everyone is happy. After a little while though, people realize there's no sense trying out for QB on my team. My son, now left without anyone gunning for his job becomes complacent. We start losing games more and more. With enough control over the market (like Apple has with the App Store), there become less and less QBs to choose from, and it's not just my team that gets worse, but the whole league.
    - toxik 7y ago
      I think the analogy isn't very good. Let me try. It's as if you're the one selling all the tickets to the only stadium in town, and you make it so that when your team plays, tickets are cheaper, more abundant, and more visible. Another local team wants to play too, but their ticket prices are outrageous, there's no promotion of the event either, and they might actually be banned from the stadium unless they use ONLY your equipment.
      - Ensorceled 7y ago
        Your analogy also isn't very good, your town has lots of other stadiums: The Samsung Galaxarium, The Googlplexel, The LG Centre, The Huawei Dome. Sure the Apple one is pretty fancy and the rules are onerous but there are plenty of other places to do business.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nixpulvis 7y ago
It's an antitrust issue. If I own the market and some of the fruit, I'll clearly put myself in a better position to attract customers, and thus make sales. The rest of the fruit vendors are 2nd class. Not to mention Apple employees are banned from making apps outside of company time, since they are aware of the issue with insiders having power to make apps that out compete the rest.
- zaroth 7y ago
  How can it possibly be an anti-trust issue for a minority player in a competitive market to choose which products to display in their own retail store? This is markedly different then, for example, Google altering search results to promote their own products, because Google owns something like 90% of Search.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    The app store is not a retail store. That's one of the major factors in the antitrust analysis. In the retail/wholesale model, the retail store buys the third party products and their own store brand products, and sells them both. It might favor the store brand with more promotion or better shelf placement, but both products appear on the shelves, and the third-party has generally already been compensated for their goods (or is contractually owed compensation). In uncommon situations, such as with new products, compensation may be contingent on products sold through (to end customers), but that is not the norm. In the appstore model, third-party app makers sell apps in Apple's store. Apple sells apps in Apple's store and promotes its own apps ahead of competing apps. It even promotes unrelated apps ahead of competing apps in a blatant attempt to push competitors off the first 2 pages of search results (i.e., off the shelf). Apple also frequently bans apps that compete with Apple's own apps or features, even if such competing apps existed for years before Apple's own apps. Any one of the aforementioned acts by Apple could be treated as an antitrust issue. And that's not even a comprehensive list.
    - Despegar 7y ago
      >The app store is not a retail store. That's one of the major factors in the antitrust analysis. Well no. What you cited was related to the Supreme Court's analysis of the App Store case, but that was only related to the issue of standing. How it differs from brick and mortar stores buying inventory isn't relevant to the actual merits of the case, which hasn't been in court yet.
mayankkaizen 7y ago
Didn't something similar happen with Microsoft and Internet Explorer?
fortran77 7y ago
I'd agree if you were searching for a Compass app. But the take that I got from reading the article is if you say "Podcast" in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.
rchaud 7y ago
It wouldn't be a big deal if Apple allowed you to install apps from outside the App Store, like they do with MacOS programs.

Causality1 7y ago

The EU fined Microsoft six hundred million dollars just for including Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows by default. Apple's behavior is much worse than that.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Apple does not have a monopoly in the mobile phone market like Microsoft had in the operating system market. Microsoft also had a court order to comply with that they forgot about in Windows 7. https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commission-fine/ https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commi...
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Microsoft never had a monopoly in the OS market. Plenty of businesses large and small used competing OSs like Apple, Unix, Linux, Beos, OS/2, DOS, etc. Microsoft had a dominant market position, and anti-competitively leveraged that market position in operating systems to muscle its way into the internet browser market.
  - greedo 7y ago
    Windows had 97% marketshare. MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, DOS, the various *nixes and Linux were NOTHING in that market.
jakear 7y ago
IMO, that fine is (for lack of a better term) bullshit. Does Android present a browser selection to EU customers?
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  No, but there are at least three running or finished antitrust cases going against Google from the EU, for Google Shopping, AdSense and Android; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google for a summary.
coldtea 7y ago
How many times this old wives tale will have to be repeated till people understand what went on then, and how it's nothing like it's now? Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to 97%, in fact). Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes. The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way. That's the same reason why you can't legally force McDonalds to also sell Burger King burgers, or GAP to sell Banana Republic clothes... And even MS monopoly position wasn't the issue (having a monopoly naturally is not illegal). The issue was it used its monopoly position to threaten and bribe OEMs to not work with competitors.
- m_ke 7y ago
  iOS revenue is 2x larger than android. There might be more cheap android phones out there but Apple has the majority of high income individuals.
  - vgetr 7y ago
    So...?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Which is not relevant. Monopoly is defined on a market, not on income segments (and even if it mattered, still on the high income individuals iOS is hardly above say 70%). Someone could sell cars for $5K and have 99% of the car market in a small city of 1000 people, while another one sells a single car for 100M and has 20 times the other's revenue. It's still the cheap car guy that has the monopoly.
    - m_ke 7y ago
      Revenue based market share is more relevant than unit market share for most businesses. Apple pulls in 2/3 of the revenue in the mobile app ecosystem and gets to act as a gatekeeper between most consumer startups and their potential customers.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Ah, the old, "It's my football so I should always get to be quarterback" argument. I guess that works for a while.

coldtea 7y ago
It should work forever, as long you own the field, and people want to use said field because that gives them access to a huge marketplace of devices that you've built and sold. So there's that...
- nixpulvis 7y ago
  You lost me with your analogy. Let me extend the pigskin thought exprement a bit. If I own the football team, and the field, and the city (hell, why not), then sure I can choose who plays QB, so I choose my son. Maybe at the start he's even not that bad of a QB, and our team wins some games. Everyone is happy. After a little while though, people realize there's no sense trying out for QB on my team. My son, now left without anyone gunning for his job becomes complacent. We start losing games more and more. With enough control over the market (like Apple has with the App Store), there become less and less QBs to choose from, and it's not just my team that gets worse, but the whole league.
  - toxik 7y ago
    I think the analogy isn't very good. Let me try. It's as if you're the one selling all the tickets to the only stadium in town, and you make it so that when your team plays, tickets are cheaper, more abundant, and more visible. Another local team wants to play too, but their ticket prices are outrageous, there's no promotion of the event either, and they might actually be banned from the stadium unless they use ONLY your equipment.
    - Ensorceled 7y ago
      Your analogy also isn't very good, your town has lots of other stadiums: The Samsung Galaxarium, The Googlplexel, The LG Centre, The Huawei Dome. Sure the Apple one is pretty fancy and the rules are onerous but there are plenty of other places to do business.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nixpulvis 7y ago

It's an antitrust issue. If I own the market and some of the fruit, I'll clearly put myself in a better position to attract customers, and thus make sales. The rest of the fruit vendors are 2nd class. Not to mention Apple employees are banned from making apps outside of company time, since they are aware of the issue with insiders having power to make apps that out compete the rest.

zaroth 7y ago
How can it possibly be an anti-trust issue for a minority player in a competitive market to choose which products to display in their own retail store? This is markedly different then, for example, Google altering search results to promote their own products, because Google owns something like 90% of Search.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  The app store is not a retail store. That's one of the major factors in the antitrust analysis. In the retail/wholesale model, the retail store buys the third party products and their own store brand products, and sells them both. It might favor the store brand with more promotion or better shelf placement, but both products appear on the shelves, and the third-party has generally already been compensated for their goods (or is contractually owed compensation). In uncommon situations, such as with new products, compensation may be contingent on products sold through (to end customers), but that is not the norm. In the appstore model, third-party app makers sell apps in Apple's store. Apple sells apps in Apple's store and promotes its own apps ahead of competing apps. It even promotes unrelated apps ahead of competing apps in a blatant attempt to push competitors off the first 2 pages of search results (i.e., off the shelf). Apple also frequently bans apps that compete with Apple's own apps or features, even if such competing apps existed for years before Apple's own apps. Any one of the aforementioned acts by Apple could be treated as an antitrust issue. And that's not even a comprehensive list.
  - Despegar 7y ago
    >The app store is not a retail store. That's one of the major factors in the antitrust analysis. Well no. What you cited was related to the Supreme Court's analysis of the App Store case, but that was only related to the issue of standing. How it differs from brick and mortar stores buying inventory isn't relevant to the actual merits of the case, which hasn't been in court yet.

mayankkaizen 7y ago

Didn't something similar happen with Microsoft and Internet Explorer?

fortran77 7y ago

I'd agree if you were searching for a Compass app. But the take that I got from reading the article is if you say "Podcast" in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.

rchaud 7y ago

It wouldn't be a big deal if Apple allowed you to install apps from outside the App Store, like they do with MacOS programs.