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Apple clearly has competitors that have a much larger share of the market.
by dleslie 6y ago
Apple clearly has competitors that have a much larger share of the market.
- emptysongglass 6y agoThey have one competitor on which users are allowed to install their own market (see F-Droid.) [1] [1] https://www.f-droid.org/ https://www.f-droid.org/
- dleslie 6y agoF-Droid itself relies upon Android's openness to allow it to be installed. If you don't like Apple's walled garden then use Android.
- im3w1l 6y agoAnd if you want to install whichever apps you want, AND not be spied on by your OS, there are basically no options. Linageos is a possibility, but with the play services situation, running any mainstream app without phoning home to google is if not impossible, extremely difficult and filled with footguns. Pine and Librem are exciting emerging possibilities but they have only been available for a very short time so it remains to be seen what will happen there.
- dleslie 6y agoPinePhone is available to order right now; and it's cheap as hell.
- onion2k 6y agoWhen people talk about Apple having a monopoly they're referring to Apple having complete control over the sale of iOS software. There is no one else in that market. Apple has 100% market share.
- dleslie 6y agoThere are other people in the _mobile software_ market; if the argument for monopoly requires being as specific as _mobile software that operates on a specific manufacturer of a minority of all phones_ then perhaps it's not a monopoly at all.
- shadowgovt 6y agoCorrect. The relevant terms are "horizontal monopoly" and "vertical monopoly." A horizontal monopoly is if one company made all the cars. A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads. Apple is a vertical monopoly across its hardware, the software that runs on that hardware (they don't own the software, but they own the distribution channel), and some of the suppliers that manufacture components for the hardware.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago> A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads. That's not a good analogy. It's more like if you bought X's car model and X had a policy that you could only buy official, certified parts from certified dealers through which they get a cut. (App Store) You can go for after market parts but if you break the car it's on you. ("Jailbreaking" AKA flashing your device)
- sixstringtheory 6y agoiOS is not a market, it’s a product. This is like saying Uber has a monopoly on all of their own assets. Wrong terminology.
- nodamage 6y agoSorry but a market consisting of a single manufacturer's own product is generally not considered a valid antitrust market for legal purposes. You can't simply declare an arbitrarily narrow market like this because every manufacturer would then have a monopoly over its own products.
- notatoad 6y agoyou don't need to have a literal monopoly to engage in illegal anticompetitive behaviour, nor is having a monopoly even illegal. Apple has monopoly-like control over the mobile app market - if you don't make an iPhone app, your product is dead in the water. and apple is using that power to crush any competition to their own in-app payment solution.