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To attract antitrust scrutiny in the US you don't need to be a monopoly. You need something economists call "market power." A firm has market power when they ar

To attract antitrust scrutiny in the US you don't need to be a monopoly. You need something economists call "market power." A firm has market power when they are able to raise their prices with impunity because consumers are unable to switch to alternatives. If Apple decides to raise the price of all the apps on its store tomorrow, what can you do? Those apps have no other way to get to you, all you can do is take the pain. That smells like market power. I guess you have the option of switching to Android, but that comes with a high cost. So figuring out whether that matters is the type of thing that would be examined in an investigation.

s3r3nity 6y ago
> If Apple decides to raise the price of all the apps on its store tomorrow, what can you do? Funny enough, I was going to argue that you don't _have_ to use Apple, but you're absolutely right on the switching costs, and is a compelling argument. (If this was r/ChangeMyView, I'd give you a delta.) Yet, from a customer experience standpoint I'm a tad worried about the implications: one solution would be to allow multiple app stores on a given platform. I know this group would support that, but it's already hard enough to teach my family how to use one app store, and to be careful about downloading shady apps - never mind MULTIPLE. Ex: if my 60 year old uncle wants to play a game, I can imagine him asking "why do I have to download a separate app just to download the app I want?"