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I don't see this as an accurate comparison. You can already rent a space right next to Walmart and open your own store if you like. Yes, I may have to pay a lan

I don't see this as an accurate comparison. You can already rent a space right next to Walmart and open your own store if you like. Yes, I may have to pay a landlord, but again, there's competition among owners of land that keeps rents at a market rate. You can think of the space within an ecosystem as virtual land. Apple has a monopoly on this virtual space. They can charge whatever they like, there is no competition. The argument of choose another phone is different, because it requires spending a large amount of money for the right to entry. To many people this is cost prohibitive. I don't have a personal stance on what the outcome should be either way, need to dig into it more.

nradov 5y ago
You can buy a new unlocked Samsung smartphone for $180. That's hardly cost prohibitive. Especially if you already have an iPhone you can just sell it and buy something else.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Someone 5y ago
Apple’s argument is that their land has value because of the work they did/do. They also may argue that rents for their land are at market rate, as demand for it stays high. Of course, that may be (is for a large part, in my opinion) because of their market power, but that, I think, isn’t much different from Walmart. Market power and sales volume are how Walmart can negotiate lower prices with sellers. Theme parks such as Disney World may be even better examples. If you want to sell ice creams there, I bet you have to pay a huge sum of money to Disney. It wouldn’t even surprise me if that were a percentage of revenues.
slver 5y ago
> I don't see this as an accurate comparison. You can already rent a space right next to Walmart and open your own store if you like. Opening a store in iOS is not "next to" it's "inside of". > The argument of choose another phone is different, because it requires spending a large amount of money for the right to entry. To many people this is cost prohibitive. This makes no sense, first because Androids tend to be cheaper than iPhones, and second no one forces you into buying an iPhone. Also "iPhone is too expensive" is not an argument for "I should be allowed to do X with it". If you don't like what an iPhone does, don't buy one. You don't get to buy a Tesla and complain how come it's so expensive and doesn't run also on oil, do you?
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  The level of specificity in debates around these subjects is kind of moot. The trajectory of growth of these companies and their impact on our everyday lives make it obvious they will be regulated to ensure fair competition. Whether it happens today, or 10 years from now... it will almost certainly happen, I'm very confident in that. I don't plan to hash out the legal language of a proposed law in a HN comment, but "platforms" will probably be defined in some way and be required to allow competition. An app store is nothing other than a market that can either be competitive or not, depending on how it's regulated. It was considered sensible to implement anti-trust laws to protect consumers in the broader markets, I have no doubt that when a privately created market reaches sufficient market share and impact, they will be subject to anti-trust laws as well. As a thought experiment, imagine 99% of the population uses iOS... now the private market of an app store becomes the de-facto public market by virtue of adoption. The same can be said for social media, where a single app can control 90% of discussion (depending on country and medium of discussion). There is no world in which these things will not be regulated as "public spaces" once they reach sufficient scale. The question is just when does the scale become sufficiently large, and when do the rules cross the line into anti-competitive behavior. They are close but maybe not quite far enough to get regulated yet.
- devit 5y ago
  The issue is about app developers who don't get to choose the phone that users have.

nradov 5y ago

You can buy a new unlocked Samsung smartphone for $180. That's hardly cost prohibitive. Especially if you already have an iPhone you can just sell it and buy something else.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Someone 5y ago

Apple’s argument is that their land has value because of the work they did/do. They also may argue that rents for their land are at market rate, as demand for it stays high. Of course, that may be (is for a large part, in my opinion) because of their market power, but that, I think, isn’t much different from Walmart. Market power and sales volume are how Walmart can negotiate lower prices with sellers. Theme parks such as Disney World may be even better examples. If you want to sell ice creams there, I bet you have to pay a huge sum of money to Disney. It wouldn’t even surprise me if that were a percentage of revenues.

slver 5y ago

> I don't see this as an accurate comparison. You can already rent a space right next to Walmart and open your own store if you like. Opening a store in iOS is not "next to" it's "inside of". > The argument of choose another phone is different, because it requires spending a large amount of money for the right to entry. To many people this is cost prohibitive. This makes no sense, first because Androids tend to be cheaper than iPhones, and second no one forces you into buying an iPhone. Also "iPhone is too expensive" is not an argument for "I should be allowed to do X with it". If you don't like what an iPhone does, don't buy one. You don't get to buy a Tesla and complain how come it's so expensive and doesn't run also on oil, do you?

adam_arthur 5y ago
The level of specificity in debates around these subjects is kind of moot. The trajectory of growth of these companies and their impact on our everyday lives make it obvious they will be regulated to ensure fair competition. Whether it happens today, or 10 years from now... it will almost certainly happen, I'm very confident in that. I don't plan to hash out the legal language of a proposed law in a HN comment, but "platforms" will probably be defined in some way and be required to allow competition. An app store is nothing other than a market that can either be competitive or not, depending on how it's regulated. It was considered sensible to implement anti-trust laws to protect consumers in the broader markets, I have no doubt that when a privately created market reaches sufficient market share and impact, they will be subject to anti-trust laws as well. As a thought experiment, imagine 99% of the population uses iOS... now the private market of an app store becomes the de-facto public market by virtue of adoption. The same can be said for social media, where a single app can control 90% of discussion (depending on country and medium of discussion). There is no world in which these things will not be regulated as "public spaces" once they reach sufficient scale. The question is just when does the scale become sufficiently large, and when do the rules cross the line into anti-competitive behavior. They are close but maybe not quite far enough to get regulated yet.
devit 5y ago
The issue is about app developers who don't get to choose the phone that users have.