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> Wallmart choose their suppliers, and sets the markup, why can't Apple? But, at the end of the day, Walmart can't prevent customers from proceeding to Kroger
by hakfoo 6y ago
> Wallmart choose their suppliers, and sets the markup, why can't Apple?
But, at the end of the day, Walmart can't prevent customers from proceeding to Kroger down the street to get the products or deals they want. That's the market regulator of last resort in most circumstances.
You say "Apple doesn't have a monopoly on phones or games". In the broad view, you may be right, but they've spent significant effort in creating a closed ecosystem with non-trivial switching costs, inside of which they DO have complete gatekeeping power. They may not have a full "prevent the customers from going to Kroger" power, but they can basically say "here's a several hundred dollar toll to leave our store, and BTW, we won't let you back in for anything else we sell", which is a pretty high barrier. Is the only available counterweight for their behaviour "drop everything and buy a new $500 phone to express your discontent?"
Google gets out of this with their hands much cleaner-- they can retreat to "Well, you can sideload apps". Epic proved they can make that a viable business that way on Android. But iOS offers nothing resembling that without asking consumers to jailbreak their devices, which is probably beyond reasonable accommodation.
I'm sort of amazed they're so desperate to cling to the no-sideload mentality. Offering sideloading with a lot of big angry red warnings immediately defuses the vast majority of anti-competition complaints, while still being scary enough that most name-brand software isn't going to immediately drop off the App Store. I'd also think it presents a welcoming option for some hobby developers, where even the $100 annual developer fees are prohibitive, until they can show there's enough of a business there to justify going to the real App Store.
- ribosometronome 6y agoUsing cost of switching as an alternative would seemingly have ramifications that could be applied to almost everything from Fortnite skins to membership stores to video game consoles to state governments.
- JiNCMG 6y agoI have all $1000s invested in XBox platform but I want to play on the PS4. Can I sue MS?
- kevingadd 6y agoYou could always try and find out! Your freedom to take digital purchases (and save data) between different console platforms is a factor here, and historically some platform holders have actively prohibited it and others have not. Only recently did Destiny 2 gain the ability to transfer save data between platforms. Oddly enough Epic pushed on this kind of freedom too: They wanted PS4 and XBox players to be able to play together, but Sony kept resisting it. They eventually pushed hard on it in public and got concessions so everyone can play the game together now. Now other multiplayer titles from smaller studios also can offer cross-play. Platform exclusives like a spider-man outfit or playable character are still typically locked to your PlayStation, though.
- tinus_hn 6y agoI don’t want to play on the PS4, I want to play PS4 games on the XBox!
- romanoderoma 6y agoDon't Fortnite skins work on every version of Fortnite, regardless of the platform?
- nodamage 6y ago> Is the only available counterweight for their behaviour "drop everything and buy a new $500 phone to express your discontent?" No. The counterweight is not buying an iPhone in the first place if side loading is important to you.
- d3nj4l 6y agoThat does not fix the problem for content creators, who have to target the nearly 50% of the US market that's on iOS. I'm sure everyone at Basecamp would prefer to use androids, but they just can't be competitive with other e-mail services without releasing the Hey app for iOS.
- RonanTheGrey 6y agoThis is part of the problem; there are entire industries now that rely on mobile device deployment. It would be untenable and unreasonable to say "hey you don't like it, F off, just don't deploy on iOS, you can always willingly give up access to over 1 billion users you know". It just doesn't even sound reasonable. In those industries - mobile gaming is one, a $150 billion a year market reaching a whopping 50% of all mobile users across platforms, that requires presence on iOS if you want to build a business in any serious way. This is where Apple is going to have a really, really hard time avoiding an accusation (and judgement) of antitrust. They literally control industries. This means that they probably have to give up some control of their platform.
- nodamage 6y agoContent creators don't have a legal right to demand to distribute to a specific smartphone any more than they have a legal right to demand to distribute inside Walmart.
- d3nj4l 6y ago> Content creators don't have a legal right to demand to distribute to a specific smartphone. That is the exact scope of the anti-trust case here, and unless you're the most preeminent expert in the field I'm not inclined to take your word in whether they have the legal right or not.