3 ms·

Plus the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly they were abusing; Apple doesn't by any reasonable metric.

by macintux 6y ago

egeozcan 6y ago
They are part of a duopoly and I hope Google also gets scrutinized.
- macintux 6y ago
  Until/unless the two companies are caught colluding against consumers, duopolies aren't covered by antitrust law afaik.
  - hparadiz 6y ago
    The Apple store is a monopoly when you consider just iOS. It is in fact 100% market share among apple devices. There is no alternative. Android doesn't replace an iPhone in many cases.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >The Apple store is a monopoly when you consider just iOS. Every business is just a monopoly if you consider it alone, and a single 7 Eleven has 100% marker share among its store.
      - hparadiz 6y ago
        I don't remember being required to use a 7-11 credit card at a 7-11 for every transaction but nice try.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        And I don't have to use an Apple credit card on the iOS app store.
        hparadiz 6y ago
        Ah but you have to use the Apple app store. There is no alternative.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        Sure there is, don't buy an Apple device. They aren't the majority or even necessary for anything. Android is a viable alternative and you can sideload applications there. And, in stark contrast to the MS antitrust case, Apple doesn't have 97% of the market share.
        hparadiz 6y ago
        You can't not have an iPhone for so many reasons. From payment processors to things like the apple watch which requires iOS to operate. Stop lying.
        coldtea 6y ago
        >You can't not have an iPhone for so many reasons. This is the most entitled, "first world" problem, I've ever heard of. Sure you can (not have one). The majority (60%+) of the population in the USA manages just fine without one. 90% in some Western European countries... Pro tip: you don't need an Apple Watch either. Pro tip 2: you might want to look up the definition of "need" and "lying".
        hparadiz 6y ago
        You'd be surprised what someone who runs a food truck or works in real estate "needs" to project "success". Actual protip: get out of your tech bubble for two seconds and talk to some real business owners.
        nl 6y ago
        A brand requirement to establish prestige seems a weak anti-trust case. Infact, a judge might see it as a counter argument. If prestige is the reason people buy Apple then almost by definition there must be alternatives.
        lancesells 6y ago
        I'm curious, do you use iOS devices?
        hparadiz 6y ago
        I own hand me downs I use for testing but they are usually in a pile on my desk and not actually in use.
        coldtea 6y ago
        Well, you don't have to use an Apple credit card in the App Store either. That said, do you remember having to use Disney money in Disneyland for every transaction?
        toast0 6y ago
        > That said, do you remember having to use Disney money in Disneyland for every transaction? I remember it being a fun option to use either Disney or US dollars in the park, maybe it was required at some point, but I don't remember that.
      - shkkmo 6y ago
        The analagous situation with convenience storea is: If any convenience store chain was able to prevent other convenience store chains from operating in a geographic area, they would have a monopoly in that area. Consumers in that market segment would have no other choice unless they were willing to sell their house and move. In your example, a consumer can easily leave 7-11 and go to a near by store at a much, much, lower cost than selling a house. On Android, to have choices beyond the Play Store, all I need to do is change some setting and instal a 3rd party store. On iPhone, to have choices beyond the AppStore I might be able to run some much more complicated and dangerous software, but only when Apple is behind in the cat and mouse game with jailbreakers. The root of the question here is one we have to answer as a society. How much should consumer choice cost (relative to the price of the good/service they are choosing). Maybe 5x is reasonable, but 500x is not. When a company deliberately does everything they can to raise those costs and thoae costs are very high (such as with Apple), I think we should absolutely call those companies to account for anti-competive and monopolostic trade practices.
        coldtea 6y ago
        >The analagous situation with convenience storea is: If any convenience store chain was able to prevent other convenience store chains from operating in a geographic area, they would have a monopoly in that area This breaks down as there's no "physical area" preventing anything. You can get an Android phone whether you're in Alaska or Miami or Tanzania. In fact it's easier, and most of the billions in the planet (including high income earners) do just that.
        shkkmo 6y ago
        The analogy is between the cost of moving to a new physical area and the cost of buying a new physical device.
        enos_feedler 6y ago
        Uh, it's more like the cost of switching your preferred convenience store chain vs. your phone platform. There are alternatives and you might like one more than the other, but at the end of the day both serve the same purpose (buy milk, or computer in my pocket). If this analogy breaks down it's not because Apple has a monopoly, it's because Android ecosystem has not delivered something similar enough to 7-11.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Hopefully that will soon change. Apple/google is a prime example of why it should.
    - katbyte 6y ago
      The the PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo stores are the exact same?
      - smashingfiasco 6y ago
        Because Apple influenced them. They copied Apple’s model because Apple had been getting away with it, and will likely have to comply with whatever new regulations might result from this.
        katbyte 6y ago
        Are you sure? I thought PlayStation store opened in 2006 and apple 2008?
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > duopolies aren't covered by antitrust law afaik. What exactly do you think the 'trust' in 'antitrust' means? From here[1]: > A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business)
    - macintux 6y ago
      Hence the caveat: > Until/unless the two companies are caught colluding against consumers
- myko 6y ago
  Android isn't just Google though. Amazon ships Android devices that don't even have Google's Android store on them. Amazon also ships their own store which Android users can download and install even on Google devices - and they're not the only 3rd party store on Android.
  - ipaddr 6y ago
    What % of android phones are Amazon? Less than 1%? I think they would need a bigger marketshare before you start including them as a market player.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      Phones? Probably nil. But tablets, firesticks, and kindles have to enjoy reasonable marketshare. Kindle is something like 70% of the ebook market, 85% if you include KindleUnlimited. I believe non-Google Android phones are quite popular outside of the USA.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Ebooks aren't really the same market as phones/tablwts though. So they're not that relevant to the discussion of a smartphone duopoly.
        myko 6y ago
        We're not talking about a smartphone duopoly though. This post is about a major iPad app. Tablets are fair game.
Jtsummers 6y ago
Right. MS had somewhere around 97% of the desktop market for a chunk of the 90s, when the anti-trust stuff was really taking off. As an example: They used that position to force OEMs to sell Windows only. BeOS was going to be on <vendor> desktops [0], but MS went to them and said, in short, "If you do this, you will have to pay retail price for our OS. And if you have to pay retail price, you will have to raise your hardware prices when selling Windows desktops. And if you have to do that, in this cutthroat low-margin industry, you won't be able to compete with the other OEMs." The anti-trust case is really interesting reading (to me at least), and worth checking out. Most people only know the headlines of what was covered by it ("it's about browsers") but aren't aware of the deeper and over decade long issues that were covered by it. Embrace, extend, extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... It wasn't just the browser's hooks into the OS (or the OS dependency on IE). It was the deliberate non-conformant manner that MS developed it in. It literally did things in the opposite way the standard described at times. See also their effort at implementing Java as part of their developer suite, where they were later forced to drop the J++ line because they were making an incompatible, non-standard Java. [0] Compaq? It's in the suit, I may track it down before the edit window is closed.
not2b 6y ago
Here's a reasonable metric: who controls the market for iPad or iPhone applications, and how did that compare to who controlled the market for applications that ran on Windows at the peak of Microsoft's dominance? For the former, the only distribution method is via Apple's store and Apple gets a cut of every sale. For the latter, developers could sell directly to the public; Microsoft did not control this. Apple's monopoly is much stronger. Apple apologists will blur this by taking about the smart phone market as a whole. But once someone has bought a device, they are no longer in that larger market. They need apps, and there's only one place to get them. That only leaves the question of whether they are abusing the monopoly. Google has a similar monopoly over Android applications, but it's not as tight, because of side-loading and fragmentation by Amazon and others. Still, it's a near-monopoly because few people bypass the Play Store.
- macintux 6y ago
  > Apple apologists will blur this by taking about the smart phone market as a whole. Until you can find a judge willing to endorse your definition of "market", it's not just "Apple apologists" but "legal precedent".
  - not2b 6y ago
    You'd have no problem finding economists to endorse my definition. As for judges, they only get to rule on cases that are brought to them, and that depends on the regulators.
    - macintux 6y ago
      So, again, legal precedent is that Apple doesn’t have a monopoly.
      - angus-prune 6y ago
        The legal precedent isn't that Apple doesn't have a monopoly. There is no legal precedent on whether Apple has a monopoly. The law is entirely agnostic on whether Apple has a monopoly until it is put to a judge.
bosswipe 6y ago
So if Apple had had any market share in the late 90s then Microsoft+Apple would have been allowed to put a strangle hold on the web the way that Google+Apple do to apps today. In that sense we are really lucky that Microsoft had that monopoly or the open web would not exist today.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  I''m really curious why this comment got downvoted. Wish I had gotten a reply. I don't see the error in my logic. If 90s Apple had had 50% of the desktop market Microsoft would not have been regulated. And Steve Jobs was no lover of open systems. In their hands the open web would not have survived.
a1369209993 6y ago
What competition does[0] Apple have on the service of distributing iphone applications? 0: indeed, can, without stupedous efforts of reverse engineering that they actively oppose
heavyset_go 6y ago
Layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[1]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Also, iOS has 60% of the mobile operating systems market in the US[2]. Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store[3]. Apple and Google are certainly leveraging their duopolies in both the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market in order to prevent competition in those markets and others. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... [2] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share [3] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  And how much of it is because how Apple runs their platform?

Plus the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly they were abusing; Apple doesn't by any reasonable metric.

egeozcan 6y ago

They are part of a duopoly and I hope Google also gets scrutinized.

macintux 6y ago
Until/unless the two companies are caught colluding against consumers, duopolies aren't covered by antitrust law afaik.
- hparadiz 6y ago
  The Apple store is a monopoly when you consider just iOS. It is in fact 100% market share among apple devices. There is no alternative. Android doesn't replace an iPhone in many cases.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >The Apple store is a monopoly when you consider just iOS. Every business is just a monopoly if you consider it alone, and a single 7 Eleven has 100% marker share among its store.
    - hparadiz 6y ago
      I don't remember being required to use a 7-11 credit card at a 7-11 for every transaction but nice try.
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        And I don't have to use an Apple credit card on the iOS app store.
        hparadiz 6y ago
        Ah but you have to use the Apple app store. There is no alternative.
        Jtsummers 6y ago
        Sure there is, don't buy an Apple device. They aren't the majority or even necessary for anything. Android is a viable alternative and you can sideload applications there. And, in stark contrast to the MS antitrust case, Apple doesn't have 97% of the market share.
        hparadiz 6y ago
        You can't not have an iPhone for so many reasons. From payment processors to things like the apple watch which requires iOS to operate. Stop lying.
        coldtea 6y ago
        >You can't not have an iPhone for so many reasons. This is the most entitled, "first world" problem, I've ever heard of. Sure you can (not have one). The majority (60%+) of the population in the USA manages just fine without one. 90% in some Western European countries... Pro tip: you don't need an Apple Watch either. Pro tip 2: you might want to look up the definition of "need" and "lying".
        hparadiz 6y ago
        You'd be surprised what someone who runs a food truck or works in real estate "needs" to project "success". Actual protip: get out of your tech bubble for two seconds and talk to some real business owners.
        nl 6y ago
        A brand requirement to establish prestige seems a weak anti-trust case. Infact, a judge might see it as a counter argument. If prestige is the reason people buy Apple then almost by definition there must be alternatives.
      - lancesells 6y ago
        I'm curious, do you use iOS devices?
        hparadiz 6y ago
        I own hand me downs I use for testing but they are usually in a pile on my desk and not actually in use.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        Well, you don't have to use an Apple credit card in the App Store either. That said, do you remember having to use Disney money in Disneyland for every transaction?
        toast0 6y ago
        > That said, do you remember having to use Disney money in Disneyland for every transaction? I remember it being a fun option to use either Disney or US dollars in the park, maybe it was required at some point, but I don't remember that.
    - shkkmo 6y ago
      The analagous situation with convenience storea is: If any convenience store chain was able to prevent other convenience store chains from operating in a geographic area, they would have a monopoly in that area. Consumers in that market segment would have no other choice unless they were willing to sell their house and move. In your example, a consumer can easily leave 7-11 and go to a near by store at a much, much, lower cost than selling a house. On Android, to have choices beyond the Play Store, all I need to do is change some setting and instal a 3rd party store. On iPhone, to have choices beyond the AppStore I might be able to run some much more complicated and dangerous software, but only when Apple is behind in the cat and mouse game with jailbreakers. The root of the question here is one we have to answer as a society. How much should consumer choice cost (relative to the price of the good/service they are choosing). Maybe 5x is reasonable, but 500x is not. When a company deliberately does everything they can to raise those costs and thoae costs are very high (such as with Apple), I think we should absolutely call those companies to account for anti-competive and monopolostic trade practices.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >The analagous situation with convenience storea is: If any convenience store chain was able to prevent other convenience store chains from operating in a geographic area, they would have a monopoly in that area This breaks down as there's no "physical area" preventing anything. You can get an Android phone whether you're in Alaska or Miami or Tanzania. In fact it's easier, and most of the billions in the planet (including high income earners) do just that.
        shkkmo 6y ago
        The analogy is between the cost of moving to a new physical area and the cost of buying a new physical device.
        enos_feedler 6y ago
        Uh, it's more like the cost of switching your preferred convenience store chain vs. your phone platform. There are alternatives and you might like one more than the other, but at the end of the day both serve the same purpose (buy milk, or computer in my pocket). If this analogy breaks down it's not because Apple has a monopoly, it's because Android ecosystem has not delivered something similar enough to 7-11.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Hopefully that will soon change. Apple/google is a prime example of why it should.
  - katbyte 6y ago
    The the PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo stores are the exact same?
    - smashingfiasco 6y ago
      Because Apple influenced them. They copied Apple’s model because Apple had been getting away with it, and will likely have to comply with whatever new regulations might result from this.
      - katbyte 6y ago
        Are you sure? I thought PlayStation store opened in 2006 and apple 2008?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > duopolies aren't covered by antitrust law afaik. What exactly do you think the 'trust' in 'antitrust' means? From here[1]: > A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business)
  - macintux 6y ago
    Hence the caveat: > Until/unless the two companies are caught colluding against consumers
myko 6y ago
Android isn't just Google though. Amazon ships Android devices that don't even have Google's Android store on them. Amazon also ships their own store which Android users can download and install even on Google devices - and they're not the only 3rd party store on Android.
- ipaddr 6y ago
  What % of android phones are Amazon? Less than 1%? I think they would need a bigger marketshare before you start including them as a market player.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Phones? Probably nil. But tablets, firesticks, and kindles have to enjoy reasonable marketshare. Kindle is something like 70% of the ebook market, 85% if you include KindleUnlimited. I believe non-Google Android phones are quite popular outside of the USA.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Ebooks aren't really the same market as phones/tablwts though. So they're not that relevant to the discussion of a smartphone duopoly.
      - myko 6y ago
        We're not talking about a smartphone duopoly though. This post is about a major iPad app. Tablets are fair game.

Jtsummers 6y ago

Right. MS had somewhere around 97% of the desktop market for a chunk of the 90s, when the anti-trust stuff was really taking off. As an example: They used that position to force OEMs to sell Windows only. BeOS was going to be on <vendor> desktops [0], but MS went to them and said, in short, "If you do this, you will have to pay retail price for our OS. And if you have to pay retail price, you will have to raise your hardware prices when selling Windows desktops. And if you have to do that, in this cutthroat low-margin industry, you won't be able to compete with the other OEMs." The anti-trust case is really interesting reading (to me at least), and worth checking out. Most people only know the headlines of what was covered by it ("it's about browsers") but aren't aware of the deeper and over decade long issues that were covered by it. Embrace, extend, extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... It wasn't just the browser's hooks into the OS (or the OS dependency on IE). It was the deliberate non-conformant manner that MS developed it in. It literally did things in the opposite way the standard described at times. See also their effort at implementing Java as part of their developer suite, where they were later forced to drop the J++ line because they were making an incompatible, non-standard Java. [0] Compaq? It's in the suit, I may track it down before the edit window is closed.

not2b 6y ago

Here's a reasonable metric: who controls the market for iPad or iPhone applications, and how did that compare to who controlled the market for applications that ran on Windows at the peak of Microsoft's dominance? For the former, the only distribution method is via Apple's store and Apple gets a cut of every sale. For the latter, developers could sell directly to the public; Microsoft did not control this. Apple's monopoly is much stronger. Apple apologists will blur this by taking about the smart phone market as a whole. But once someone has bought a device, they are no longer in that larger market. They need apps, and there's only one place to get them. That only leaves the question of whether they are abusing the monopoly. Google has a similar monopoly over Android applications, but it's not as tight, because of side-loading and fragmentation by Amazon and others. Still, it's a near-monopoly because few people bypass the Play Store.

macintux 6y ago
> Apple apologists will blur this by taking about the smart phone market as a whole. Until you can find a judge willing to endorse your definition of "market", it's not just "Apple apologists" but "legal precedent".
- not2b 6y ago
  You'd have no problem finding economists to endorse my definition. As for judges, they only get to rule on cases that are brought to them, and that depends on the regulators.
  - macintux 6y ago
    So, again, legal precedent is that Apple doesn’t have a monopoly.
    - angus-prune 6y ago
      The legal precedent isn't that Apple doesn't have a monopoly. There is no legal precedent on whether Apple has a monopoly. The law is entirely agnostic on whether Apple has a monopoly until it is put to a judge.

bosswipe 6y ago

So if Apple had had any market share in the late 90s then Microsoft+Apple would have been allowed to put a strangle hold on the web the way that Google+Apple do to apps today. In that sense we are really lucky that Microsoft had that monopoly or the open web would not exist today.

bosswipe 6y ago
I''m really curious why this comment got downvoted. Wish I had gotten a reply. I don't see the error in my logic. If 90s Apple had had 50% of the desktop market Microsoft would not have been regulated. And Steve Jobs was no lover of open systems. In their hands the open web would not have survived.

a1369209993 6y ago

What competition does[0] Apple have on the service of distributing iphone applications? 0: indeed, can, without stupedous efforts of reverse engineering that they actively oppose

heavyset_go 6y ago

Layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[1]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Also, iOS has 60% of the mobile operating systems market in the US[2]. Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store[3]. Apple and Google are certainly leveraging their duopolies in both the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market in order to prevent competition in those markets and others. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... [2] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share [3] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

richardwhiuk 6y ago
And how much of it is because how Apple runs their platform?