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1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. 2. If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. 3. If enough content providers do

1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. 2. If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. 3. If enough content providers don't use their platform, consumers we shift to a different one. I think one of the advantages that Sony has had over MSFT in the video game console space has been their exclusive content. 4. Taxes have literally nothing to do with this. The App Store has made life much easier for countless app creators. Are the fees exorbitant? Sure. Is the market capable of correcting this behavior across a reasonable timeline, also yes. I was planning to switch TV devices after Apple's tiff with Spotify. It was resolved because Apple knows that if they don't support the content providers other platforms do, they will lose market share.

UnpossibleJim 6y ago
By these standards, then no one should be calling for anti-trust cases to going forward against Google, Amazon or Facebook. There are alternatives to all of these, some of them large. Google has Microsoft sized competition; Amazon competes with the likes of Walmart and Target in similar shopping spaces; and Facebook competes with Reddit and has competed with Google (who is now defunct in that area). To be honest, I'm not 100% where I stand with these considering that ISP's haven't been prosecuted for, what seem, clearly more egregious anti-trust violations. These types of cases should come up first, in my opinion, but we are where we are.
- moate 6y ago
  >>These types of cases should come up first, in my opinion, but we are where we are. Don't worry sir, the legal system is (mostly) asynchronous! You could do both.
- bhupy 6y ago
  ...yes? It’s not clear that there is a real or straightforward anti-trust case to be made against many of these companies (especially Amazon). For some reason the HN echo chamber is convinced that there is an obvious and bulletproof anti-trust case against every big tech company, and that the delay in enforcing it strictly comes down to corruption or some inherent flaw in the justice system.
gojomo 6y ago
> 1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. Apple's market power seems to fit this legal definition quite well: https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.
- nardi 6y ago
  The big disagreement is whether the market should be defined as "iOS apps" or whether the market should be defined as just "smartphone apps" or "smartphones, which have apps." Does Apple have monopoly power over the "iOS apps" market? Yes. Do they exclude competitors from that market? Abso-fuckin-lutely. But it seems to me like the understanding has always been that people do have a choice. If they don't like Apple's control over the iOS App Store, they can buy an Android. Apple, after all, does not have a majority share of the smartphone market. Under that understanding, the market is smartphones, and apps are just a feature of the smartphone.
  - withinboredom 6y ago
    But you don't /really/ have a choice. Once you've dumped more than a few hundred bucks into the ecosystem (or in some friend's cases, thousands) you literally must throw that away to use a different store. You cannot say: "Oh, I'm not going to the Apple store today, I'm going to use the Microsoft one." There's no competition, nor opportunity for competition. The broader smartphone app markets do not compete.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - filleduchaos 6y ago
      "Choice" is not defined as "the easiest thing to do", strangely enough. I'll admit, I'm a bit surprised to see this idea that the US government should mollycoddle all of its citizens through life on HN. I've spent orders of magnitude more money on my console and the games I bought for it than I've ever spent on any app store. Where is all the outrage over Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo's oh so hideous monopolistic practices?
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
>1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. Depends on how you define the market. The courts will have to decide whether the iOS app distribution market and the iOS in-app payments market is a relevant market. If so then Apple clearly has a monopoly in those markets. >2. If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. 3. If enough content providers don't use their platform, consumers we shift to a different one. The question that will have to be answered is whether that is an economically viable option for a sufficient number of content providers. If not then consumers are being harmed by Apple's anti-competitive behaviour.
stale2002 6y ago
> If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. Or instead of that, companies can use the law to prosecute apple for anti-competitive behavior. Anti-competitive behavior is illegal and should be prosecuted.
lostmyoldone 6y ago
Apple can be said to be a monopoly according to at least some definitions of monopoly, more precisely, and at the very least - it has a legal monopoly on selling macOS due to copyright. Since they have a legal monopoly in some sense, it's not completely unreasonable to revisit how actions potentially prohibited by antitrust laws shold interact with legal monopolies. Especially when it comes to devices where changing device mandates you also change almost all apps (Which the legal monopoly profited of.) To sometimes significant cost, and inconvenience. It's not entirely obvious that simply because Apple isn't the only seller of smart phones, that they can't be involved in anti-competetive behavio, and/or monopolistic behavior.By using their app store to extract considerable revenue by an questionably high transaction cost. It could be obvious because of precedent, but nevertheless, unless that judgement was made in resent years, and with the soaring costs of migrating your digital life, it's only as obvious as you make it to be if you narrow the scope of monopoly for physical to that where a single worldwide monopoly is the only business there is. One can be safe to say that in penning the dictionary definition of monopoly, the author was probably not considering entire markets that would fit in a pocket, and where the good purchased in the market can only be used on the pocket device, and impossible to extract from the market to use in another setting! Neither did likely the lawmakers.
Mindwipe 6y ago
> 1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. The European definition doesn't require you to even have the majority of a market - just the ability to materially affect consumer pricing. Proving that in court will be fairly trivial I think. (Note this documentation from thd EU, which states a company "probably" needs 40% share - https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en.html https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en...)

UnpossibleJim 6y ago

By these standards, then no one should be calling for anti-trust cases to going forward against Google, Amazon or Facebook. There are alternatives to all of these, some of them large. Google has Microsoft sized competition; Amazon competes with the likes of Walmart and Target in similar shopping spaces; and Facebook competes with Reddit and has competed with Google (who is now defunct in that area). To be honest, I'm not 100% where I stand with these considering that ISP's haven't been prosecuted for, what seem, clearly more egregious anti-trust violations. These types of cases should come up first, in my opinion, but we are where we are.

moate 6y ago
>>These types of cases should come up first, in my opinion, but we are where we are. Don't worry sir, the legal system is (mostly) asynchronous! You could do both.
bhupy 6y ago
...yes? It’s not clear that there is a real or straightforward anti-trust case to be made against many of these companies (especially Amazon). For some reason the HN echo chamber is convinced that there is an obvious and bulletproof anti-trust case against every big tech company, and that the delay in enforcing it strictly comes down to corruption or some inherent flaw in the justice system.

gojomo 6y ago

> 1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. Apple's market power seems to fit this legal definition quite well: https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.

nardi 6y ago
The big disagreement is whether the market should be defined as "iOS apps" or whether the market should be defined as just "smartphone apps" or "smartphones, which have apps." Does Apple have monopoly power over the "iOS apps" market? Yes. Do they exclude competitors from that market? Abso-fuckin-lutely. But it seems to me like the understanding has always been that people do have a choice. If they don't like Apple's control over the iOS App Store, they can buy an Android. Apple, after all, does not have a majority share of the smartphone market. Under that understanding, the market is smartphones, and apps are just a feature of the smartphone.
- withinboredom 6y ago
  But you don't /really/ have a choice. Once you've dumped more than a few hundred bucks into the ecosystem (or in some friend's cases, thousands) you literally must throw that away to use a different store. You cannot say: "Oh, I'm not going to the Apple store today, I'm going to use the Microsoft one." There's no competition, nor opportunity for competition. The broader smartphone app markets do not compete.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    "Choice" is not defined as "the easiest thing to do", strangely enough. I'll admit, I'm a bit surprised to see this idea that the US government should mollycoddle all of its citizens through life on HN. I've spent orders of magnitude more money on my console and the games I bought for it than I've ever spent on any app store. Where is all the outrage over Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo's oh so hideous monopolistic practices?

fauigerzigerk 6y ago

>1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. Depends on how you define the market. The courts will have to decide whether the iOS app distribution market and the iOS in-app payments market is a relevant market. If so then Apple clearly has a monopoly in those markets. >2. If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. 3. If enough content providers don't use their platform, consumers we shift to a different one. The question that will have to be answered is whether that is an economically viable option for a sufficient number of content providers. If not then consumers are being harmed by Apple's anti-competitive behaviour.

stale2002 6y ago

> If you don't want to pay their fees, don't use their platform. Or instead of that, companies can use the law to prosecute apple for anti-competitive behavior. Anti-competitive behavior is illegal and should be prosecuted.

lostmyoldone 6y ago

Apple can be said to be a monopoly according to at least some definitions of monopoly, more precisely, and at the very least - it has a legal monopoly on selling macOS due to copyright. Since they have a legal monopoly in some sense, it's not completely unreasonable to revisit how actions potentially prohibited by antitrust laws shold interact with legal monopolies. Especially when it comes to devices where changing device mandates you also change almost all apps (Which the legal monopoly profited of.) To sometimes significant cost, and inconvenience. It's not entirely obvious that simply because Apple isn't the only seller of smart phones, that they can't be involved in anti-competetive behavio, and/or monopolistic behavior.By using their app store to extract considerable revenue by an questionably high transaction cost. It could be obvious because of precedent, but nevertheless, unless that judgement was made in resent years, and with the soaring costs of migrating your digital life, it's only as obvious as you make it to be if you narrow the scope of monopoly for physical to that where a single worldwide monopoly is the only business there is. One can be safe to say that in penning the dictionary definition of monopoly, the author was probably not considering entire markets that would fit in a pocket, and where the good purchased in the market can only be used on the pocket device, and impossible to extract from the market to use in another setting! Neither did likely the lawmakers.

Mindwipe 6y ago

> 1. It's clearly not a monopoly by any accepted definition. The European definition doesn't require you to even have the majority of a market - just the ability to materially affect consumer pricing. Proving that in court will be fairly trivial I think. (Note this documentation from thd EU, which states a company "probably" needs 40% share - https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en.html https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en...)