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Microsoft is not in the business of making money from apps, right now they need growth, it might even be a question of hey so we need to keep the store running.

• AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  So you're saying that companies who have to compete charge less whereas companies with a dominant market position can extract monopoly rents because they lack competition? But people keep telling me that isn't the case for Apple. Shouldn't they be doing the same thing to try to get store market share from Google?
  • jsjohnst 6y ago
    > So you're saying that companies who have to compete charge less whereas companies with a dominant market position can extract monopoly rents because they lack competition? Not GP, but I didn’t read it that way. I read it as Microsoft loss leadering their store to get growth.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      "Loss leader" means losing money one one product in order to get people to show up who buy more of something else. How do you imagine Microsoft's costs for paying a ~3% credit card fee and hosting a ~50MB app are going to exceed 5%? Also, what's the other product they intend to make money on supposed to be? You can't attract people to the store with low fees and then raise them later or they'd just leave as soon as you do. Unless you would require them to use Microsoft's store and no other, but then you could just do that from the outset, except that it'd leave you with the same sort of antitrust scrutiny that Apple should be under for doing the same thing.