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I agree but I'm curious about how it will play out in practice. Apple charges $99/year just to publish apps on the store and then takes 30% of the payments. If

by q-rews 5y ago

I agree but I'm curious about how it will play out in practice. Apple charges $99/year just to publish apps on the store and then takes 30% of the payments. If forced, will they leave just the $99 payment or will they change it to, say, "pay more if you want your payment processor" or "you can use your payment processor but you still owe us 15%"? Many platforms require fees to sell on them. eBay for example has asked for a percentage for years, even if it did not handle payments at all. Are Apple and Google going to be forced to offer the service (the App Store) for free because of their duopoly?

Vespasian 5y ago
They wouldn't be forced to offer their services for free. However laws can and do regulate what constitutes a "fair" price for a certain service. In some countries the quasi/effective/total monopoly ISP is forced to rent their last mile phone cables to competitors for a regulated price. A similar thing could happen to Apple and Google with a government agency deciding what they are allowed to charge for their services of providing the app store and the OS. Or they could be forced to allow competing app stores with the same privileges as their own (beyond what is "technically" possible on Android). Either way it looks like they'll loose their iron grip over on customers phones (in some countries at least). That's the price of effectively monopolizing a market and getting very rich doing it.