7 ms·

The iOS Apps market would be much smaller if not for App Review.

by valuearb 6y ago

vidarh 6y ago
That some aspects of it may positive does not mean some aspects of it can't also be anti-competitive.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Assume you get in early in a rapidly growing city and secure the best possible location for your mall. You build the worlds best mall, with great parking and mass transit options, very high security, constant maintenance and high quality construction, so that customers feel very comfortable shopping there. And you don’t even charge monthly rent, instead you ask for a 30% share of sales. That never stopped any retailer, all the best sign up in droves. Your location/strategy is so successful you become the highest grossing mall in the country, and your retailers make substantially more in your mall than any other. Retailers grumble about the 30%, but still spend more building their stores in your mall than anywhere else and you have more tenants than any other mall. They very rarely leave because it’s so profitable being your tenant. But after over a decade of being the best place in retail for retailers, you discover some of your retailers are taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to their homes and billing online, so they don’t have to pay you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance, security, or the value of being in your mall. So you shut down anyone you catch, and kick them out. Now they claim that being held to their leases is “anti-competitive“, and demand a portion of the mall be set aside for direct sales with no revenue share to give customers a choice. Those direct sales will benefit from the experience you built, but again will contribute zero to maintain it. In fact they will bring in retailers that will actively undercut its security and make the purchasing experience worse. So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive?
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive? The aspects of Apple's behavior are that they use their control of a large percentage of the US market to take actions against competitors. Your example that you gave, would not be illegally anti-competitive, because a single mall is a small market. If, instead, in the example you gave, the mall owner, owned half of all retail space, within a 100 mile radius (and a singular other competitor controlled the other half of all retail space within 100 miles), then the courts would absolutely call the behavior anti-competitive. And before you say it, yes Apple is not a literal monopoly, but that does not matter. Apple is 1 half of a duopoly in the US, and that is bad enough, that their anti-competitive behavior should be regulated. In the US, if a company has a large amount of market power, even if they are not a literal monopoly, then certain anti-competitive behavior becomes illegal.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Your analogy is false on it’s face. It’s not anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market through excellence. No way a successful mall is ever bothered with an antitrust claim merely for being successful. And Google doesn’t control 100% of Android, there are alternate app stores available. So your analogy fails at multiple levels. The Apple Mall succeeded because it’s a better customer experience, why should that be illegal, and why shouldn’t Apple benefit from their foresight and efforts? The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best App Store. Every attribute of their walled garden contributes to its value, not just for Apple, but for developers and customers. Apple has about 15% of phone sales. It’s developers make more than half the entire mobile app market revenues. How is Apples behavior hurting them?
      - stale2002 6y ago
        > It’s not anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market I never said that getting 50% of the market, on its own, is anti-competitive. Instead, what is anti-competive, is once you have a large amount of market power, such as 50%, it now becomes illegal to use anti-competitive practices to keep out competitors. > No way a successful mall ..... merely for being successful. I never said this. Instead, what I am saying is that using large amounts of market power, to keep out competitors, is anti-competitive. > The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best App Store. It doesn't matter if you got to 50% of the market through being good. It is still illegal to use large amounts of market power to keep out competitors. > Apple has about 15% of phone sales. Apple has 50% of the market in the USA. And the lawsuits are happening in the USA, so thats all that matters. > How is Apples behavior hurting them? It is hurting competing app stores from entering the market, because of Apple's actions that make it very difficult for competing app stores to be installed. > why shouldn’t Apple benefit from their foresight and efforts? They can benefit. They just shouldn't be allowed to use their large amount of market power to keep out competitors, because that is anti-competitive.
        valuearb 6y ago
        Apple has zero obligation to allow competitive app stores in iOS. It’s never been a feature they promised customers, and it’s not wanted by most app developers. It’s not anticompetitive to refuse to build access to your property for new competitors. In this case it’s clearly not anticompetitive when forcing them to allow alternate app stores would be both anti-consumer and anti-developer.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The piece you're missing is that if the app store is a mall then an iPhone is your house. So you have all of these people who live in an Apple house, which they may do for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with the mall. Then the Apple mall is taking 30% and someone says they want to set up their own mall somewhere else. It's a completely separate "mall" -- apps hosted on different servers with different payment processing etc. But then Apple says not only that nobody who shops in their mall can go shop in any other mall too, but also that nobody who lives in a house they built can either. How is that not anti-competitive?
    - valuearb 6y ago
      You want to buy a house in Apple Village. It’s the best place for your needs, safe, secure, beautiful. Apple is constantly working at improving your security as well. And it has a great mall that helps Apple keep the village secure. The merchants make a great deal of money, which ensures you don’t lack for choice and quality. And you are happy to shop there because Apple vets the merchants, and handles the purchase system, so it’s easy for you to get refunds and deal with subscriptions. There are other malls, but not on Apple Village property,they are really hard to get to and Apple doesn’t help you get there. But you knew this because it hadn’t changed for 13 years. So why should Apple be forced to build an expressway on their property to make it easy for you to shop at these other malls? They never promised you that yet you moved to Apple Village all the same. And they have good reasons not to. Not only does it reduce safety and security for Apple Village residents, they just got easier to scam. Potential new Apple Village residents will be less likely to move in. Apples best merchant partners will lose customers and money.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Apple Village sounds quaint. We're talking about a company whose customer base would make it the third largest country in the world, ahead of the United States. This is a corporation that has declared its own national borders and instituted an unelected customs enforcement agency. "If you don't like it then leave." Is that supposed to be a real solution? What if you have just as many issues with the other remaining superpower? Competition is supposed to be constraining abuse. That doesn't work if to compete on apps you have to be able to develop your own phone platform and convince your entire app customer base to switch to it.
  - _-david-_ 6y ago
    >So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive? None of what you said is anti-competitive since you left out the anti-competitive part of the story. The only mall that is allowed is that one single mall. You are not allowed to start your own mall and since there are no other malls you cannot move to another one. You are basically stuck putting your store in that mall or not having a store at all.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      You are allowed to start your own mall. It has a big green robot on it...
      - _-david-_ 6y ago
        Only if you move to another city.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Would you move to a city where you knew before hand that some of the regulations weren’t appealing when you could easily move to another city right next door?
        _-david-_ 6y ago
        Many people don't think about the regulations about malls before moving to a city. (I am guessing the HN crowd might be a bit different than the average person). They see all their friends moving to the city. They know the city is the hip, cool city and they move. Once they get used to the city they realize the regulations are restrictive. While it is possible to move to another city people have grown accustomed to the city they live in. There could be certain amenities that are not available in that other city (imessage being the biggest one. Some people get less messages since they have a different color bubble if they are not on imessage.). People may want to vote for different / changed restrictions on malls but they realize the city they moved to is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. The person who owns the mall also makes all the laws and they won't allow you to start your own mall since it would cut into their profits. They make the claim it is about your security. If somebody starts their own mall they won't be able to ensure you won't get mugged. Instead of letting you take a chance in a new mall they just ban their competitors outright.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Apple can do whatever they want in their store. That's not anti-competitive. Restricting people from using other stores is anti-competitive. They are, quire literally, preventing competition. > But after over a decade of being the best place in retail for retailers, you discover some of your retailers are taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to their homes and billing online, so they don’t have to pay you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance, security, or the value of being in your mall. Apple can do whatever they want in their mall. This is about them preventing people from going to other malls. Let them enforce whatever they want for the retailers thatn want in their mall, as long as the same customers cane be served elsewhere. Apple's doing the whole company store in the company town trick, except they've figured out that if the town is also separated by a hundred miles of company road that they can control, that makes it even harder for people to get out of the trap. You can argue all you want that it's okay that Apple takes 30% of the profit on any picks sold, and that the benefits they provide to keep their people safe is just that worth it, and that they've worked hard to provide a save environment by keeping everyone else a hundred miles away through their private roads, but we've seen this story before. What makes Apple different in this case? Because people can just move to Android? Company town workers could have just left for different companies too.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Malls usually ask for a percentage of revenue now... https://www.thebalancesmb.com/average-percentage-commercial-rent-3515423 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/average-percentage-commercial-...

The iOS Apps market would be much smaller if not for App Review.

vidarh 6y ago

That some aspects of it may positive does not mean some aspects of it can't also be anti-competitive.

valuearb 6y ago
Assume you get in early in a rapidly growing city and secure the best possible location for your mall. You build the worlds best mall, with great parking and mass transit options, very high security, constant maintenance and high quality construction, so that customers feel very comfortable shopping there. And you don’t even charge monthly rent, instead you ask for a 30% share of sales. That never stopped any retailer, all the best sign up in droves. Your location/strategy is so successful you become the highest grossing mall in the country, and your retailers make substantially more in your mall than any other. Retailers grumble about the 30%, but still spend more building their stores in your mall than anywhere else and you have more tenants than any other mall. They very rarely leave because it’s so profitable being your tenant. But after over a decade of being the best place in retail for retailers, you discover some of your retailers are taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to their homes and billing online, so they don’t have to pay you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance, security, or the value of being in your mall. So you shut down anyone you catch, and kick them out. Now they claim that being held to their leases is “anti-competitive“, and demand a portion of the mall be set aside for direct sales with no revenue share to give customers a choice. Those direct sales will benefit from the experience you built, but again will contribute zero to maintain it. In fact they will bring in retailers that will actively undercut its security and make the purchasing experience worse. So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive?
- stale2002 6y ago
  > So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive? The aspects of Apple's behavior are that they use their control of a large percentage of the US market to take actions against competitors. Your example that you gave, would not be illegally anti-competitive, because a single mall is a small market. If, instead, in the example you gave, the mall owner, owned half of all retail space, within a 100 mile radius (and a singular other competitor controlled the other half of all retail space within 100 miles), then the courts would absolutely call the behavior anti-competitive. And before you say it, yes Apple is not a literal monopoly, but that does not matter. Apple is 1 half of a duopoly in the US, and that is bad enough, that their anti-competitive behavior should be regulated. In the US, if a company has a large amount of market power, even if they are not a literal monopoly, then certain anti-competitive behavior becomes illegal.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Your analogy is false on it’s face. It’s not anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market through excellence. No way a successful mall is ever bothered with an antitrust claim merely for being successful. And Google doesn’t control 100% of Android, there are alternate app stores available. So your analogy fails at multiple levels. The Apple Mall succeeded because it’s a better customer experience, why should that be illegal, and why shouldn’t Apple benefit from their foresight and efforts? The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best App Store. Every attribute of their walled garden contributes to its value, not just for Apple, but for developers and customers. Apple has about 15% of phone sales. It’s developers make more than half the entire mobile app market revenues. How is Apples behavior hurting them?
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > It’s not anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market I never said that getting 50% of the market, on its own, is anti-competitive. Instead, what is anti-competive, is once you have a large amount of market power, such as 50%, it now becomes illegal to use anti-competitive practices to keep out competitors. > No way a successful mall ..... merely for being successful. I never said this. Instead, what I am saying is that using large amounts of market power, to keep out competitors, is anti-competitive. > The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best App Store. It doesn't matter if you got to 50% of the market through being good. It is still illegal to use large amounts of market power to keep out competitors. > Apple has about 15% of phone sales. Apple has 50% of the market in the USA. And the lawsuits are happening in the USA, so thats all that matters. > How is Apples behavior hurting them? It is hurting competing app stores from entering the market, because of Apple's actions that make it very difficult for competing app stores to be installed. > why shouldn’t Apple benefit from their foresight and efforts? They can benefit. They just shouldn't be allowed to use their large amount of market power to keep out competitors, because that is anti-competitive.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        Apple has zero obligation to allow competitive app stores in iOS. It’s never been a feature they promised customers, and it’s not wanted by most app developers. It’s not anticompetitive to refuse to build access to your property for new competitors. In this case it’s clearly not anticompetitive when forcing them to allow alternate app stores would be both anti-consumer and anti-developer.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  The piece you're missing is that if the app store is a mall then an iPhone is your house. So you have all of these people who live in an Apple house, which they may do for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with the mall. Then the Apple mall is taking 30% and someone says they want to set up their own mall somewhere else. It's a completely separate "mall" -- apps hosted on different servers with different payment processing etc. But then Apple says not only that nobody who shops in their mall can go shop in any other mall too, but also that nobody who lives in a house they built can either. How is that not anti-competitive?
  - valuearb 6y ago
    You want to buy a house in Apple Village. It’s the best place for your needs, safe, secure, beautiful. Apple is constantly working at improving your security as well. And it has a great mall that helps Apple keep the village secure. The merchants make a great deal of money, which ensures you don’t lack for choice and quality. And you are happy to shop there because Apple vets the merchants, and handles the purchase system, so it’s easy for you to get refunds and deal with subscriptions. There are other malls, but not on Apple Village property,they are really hard to get to and Apple doesn’t help you get there. But you knew this because it hadn’t changed for 13 years. So why should Apple be forced to build an expressway on their property to make it easy for you to shop at these other malls? They never promised you that yet you moved to Apple Village all the same. And they have good reasons not to. Not only does it reduce safety and security for Apple Village residents, they just got easier to scam. Potential new Apple Village residents will be less likely to move in. Apples best merchant partners will lose customers and money.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Apple Village sounds quaint. We're talking about a company whose customer base would make it the third largest country in the world, ahead of the United States. This is a corporation that has declared its own national borders and instituted an unelected customs enforcement agency. "If you don't like it then leave." Is that supposed to be a real solution? What if you have just as many issues with the other remaining superpower? Competition is supposed to be constraining abuse. That doesn't work if to compete on apps you have to be able to develop your own phone platform and convince your entire app customer base to switch to it.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  >So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive? None of what you said is anti-competitive since you left out the anti-competitive part of the story. The only mall that is allowed is that one single mall. You are not allowed to start your own mall and since there are no other malls you cannot move to another one. You are basically stuck putting your store in that mall or not having a store at all.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    You are allowed to start your own mall. It has a big green robot on it...
    - _-david-_ 6y ago
      Only if you move to another city.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Would you move to a city where you knew before hand that some of the regulations weren’t appealing when you could easily move to another city right next door?
        _-david-_ 6y ago
        Many people don't think about the regulations about malls before moving to a city. (I am guessing the HN crowd might be a bit different than the average person). They see all their friends moving to the city. They know the city is the hip, cool city and they move. Once they get used to the city they realize the regulations are restrictive. While it is possible to move to another city people have grown accustomed to the city they live in. There could be certain amenities that are not available in that other city (imessage being the biggest one. Some people get less messages since they have a different color bubble if they are not on imessage.). People may want to vote for different / changed restrictions on malls but they realize the city they moved to is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship. The person who owns the mall also makes all the laws and they won't allow you to start your own mall since it would cut into their profits. They make the claim it is about your security. If somebody starts their own mall they won't be able to ensure you won't get mugged. Instead of letting you take a chance in a new mall they just ban their competitors outright.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Apple can do whatever they want in their store. That's not anti-competitive. Restricting people from using other stores is anti-competitive. They are, quire literally, preventing competition. > But after over a decade of being the best place in retail for retailers, you discover some of your retailers are taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to their homes and billing online, so they don’t have to pay you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance, security, or the value of being in your mall. Apple can do whatever they want in their mall. This is about them preventing people from going to other malls. Let them enforce whatever they want for the retailers thatn want in their mall, as long as the same customers cane be served elsewhere. Apple's doing the whole company store in the company town trick, except they've figured out that if the town is also separated by a hundred miles of company road that they can control, that makes it even harder for people to get out of the trap. You can argue all you want that it's okay that Apple takes 30% of the profit on any picks sold, and that the benefits they provide to keep their people safe is just that worth it, and that they've worked hard to provide a save environment by keeping everyone else a hundred miles away through their private roads, but we've seen this story before. What makes Apple different in this case? Because people can just move to Android? Company town workers could have just left for different companies too.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Malls usually ask for a percentage of revenue now... https://www.thebalancesmb.com/average-percentage-commercial-rent-3515423 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/average-percentage-commercial-...