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> Every monopoly dispute comes down to defining the market in question. Whether the market is phones, tablets, smartwatches or personal computers, Apple's marke
by ardy42 6y ago
> Every monopoly dispute comes down to defining the market in question. Whether the market is phones, tablets, smartwatches or personal computers, Apple's market share comes nowhere near close to being a monopoly.
Exactly, which is why it's in no way clear that "Apple's market share comes nowhere near close to being a monopoly." If you defined Standard Oil's market as "fuels," it wasn't a monopoly because it was competing against coal and wood. If you defined AT&T's market as "communication services," it wasn't a monopoly because it was competing against TV, Radio, and the Post Office. And if you defined Apple's market as "3rd party software distribution, in general," you'd get the same result, but maybe not if its market is "3rd party software distribution for ~45% of all American phone users."
Since the advent of antitrust law, every monopolist has a definition of its market that magically makes it not a monopoly and obscures its anticompetitive behavior; but that's not the definition we should use to judge them.
- johncolanduoni 6y agoI think there’s a pretty clear difference between “3rd party smartphone software distribution” and “3rd party smartphone software distribution for ~45% of all American phone users, and I get to pick which users, and coincidentally I only pick Apple users”. You’re the one stacking the deck in that instance, not Apple.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoSure, but I think there's a tendency to try and make this seem way more clear-cut in either direction than it really is, e.g., Apple clearly {is | is not} guilty of antitrust violation by using their position as platform owner to dictate what applications and services are legally allowed on their platform. There's very little precedence in computing history for this other than game consoles, and it's not super crazy to ask whether that's a model that should apply to smartphones and tablets. (To me, that seems to be actually be a fundamental question, and I don't think I have an answer.)
- ardy42 6y ago> I think there’s a pretty clear difference between “3rd party smartphone software distribution” and “3rd party smartphone software distribution for ~45% of all American phone users, and I get to pick which users, and coincidentally I only pick Apple users”. You’re the one stacking the deck in that instance, not Apple. Not really, if you look at it from the perspective of software developers. If an Android developer no longer wants to be a customer of the Play Store (or gets rejected by them), they can go to a 3rd party app store or tell their users to sideload. An iOS developer has no options besides Apple: they either stick with them or essentially `rm -rf AllMyIOsInvestment/`.
- johncolanduoni 6y agoCan I sue Red Hat if my software worked on RHEL 8 but they remove some key component I rely on in RHEL 9, if all my customers use RHEL? How about when Microsoft dropped Silverlight and basically killed any products built on it and the ability to put “Silverlight developer” on one’s resume? Or Adobe and Flash for that matter? I think it’s reasonable to put some restrictions on the choices a company can make about their product direction, but just “it screwed a third party that built on my product” is a bad one.