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Dutch watchdog finds Apple App Store payment rules anti-competitive

371 points by d3nj4l 5y ago

_oyks 5y ago
Let's hope they don't take the incoming Apple bribes for a new office in Amsterdam or something
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
AlexandrB 5y ago
> They included a complaint from Match Group, owner of the popular dating service Tinder, which said Apple's rules were hindering it from direct communications with its customers about payments. As the Alien vs. Predator tagline said: whoever wins, we lose.
- isaacfrond 5y ago
  > The Dutch investigation into whether Apple's practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant market position was launched in 2019 but later reduced in scope to focus primarily on dating market apps. Apple might just remove dating apps from the app store for the Netherlands. Problem solved.
  - emn13 5y ago
    I suspect your comment isn't entirely in good faith, but that might well be considered strong evidence of anti-competitive behavior.
- emsy 5y ago
  It didn’t have to be that way. If Apple had sensible policies that stand the test of regulatory scrutiny this wouldn’t happen. Now that lawmakers get involved I will expect the worst outcome for customers, or as you succinctly put it „we lose“.
  - halostatue 5y ago
    From a purely consumer perspective, Apple's policies are eminently sensible. Allowing external IAP makes it harder if not impossible to enforce simple cancellation. If Apple allows external IAP, but _also_ requires strict dispute resolution and simple subscription cancellation, that would probably be deemed anticompetitive as well, even though it's thoroughly pro-consumer. The problem here is that the regulatory scrutiny is only on one dimension, not the full picture. And in the full picture, Apple's policies are eminently reasonable—if their fees are a bit high.
    - shagie 5y ago
      > Allowing external IAP makes it harder if not impossible to enforce simple cancellation. Thus the looming changes: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776960
    - jorams 5y ago
      > If Apple allows external IAP, but _also_ requires strict dispute resolution and simple subscription cancellation, that would probably be deemed anticompetitive as well, even though it's thoroughly pro-consumer. Why would that be considered anticompetitive?
      - halostatue 5y ago
        I personally don’t think that it would be. I also have very little problem with Apple’s current stance on IAP and _who_ actually owns the customer relationship. (Quibbles can be made about percentages. If 30% is too high for Apple, maybe we should be taking a much closer look at a _lot_ of retailer relationships.) However, the same people who say that it’s anticompetitive for Apple to control the payment flow are likely to say that _any_ impingement of Apple on the customer relationship is anticompetitive. These are the people who don’t actually _care_ about the customer relationship, like the NYTimes subscription department, or the companies that bank on customers forgetting to cancel their subscription for months at a time or not wanting to spend time on the phone to fight over a $1.29/month subscription fee. IMO, antitrust/anticompetition investigations tend to be _far_ too limited in their scope (they look only at one or two aspects and not the big picture of what's happening). I remember a few years ago when Apple had worked with publishers to establish a new standard ebook contract for publishers and marketplaces. It was one that would have (slightly) raised the prices of ebooks, but replaced the unilaterally imposed contract that Amazon provided. Apple got in trouble over it, even the result would have been a _better_ and more _competitive_ marketplace and not one controlled by Amazon. I have opinions on what should be done with the app stores that would _probably_ fix a lot of the issues, but any changes to the app stores need to look at whether it would be a _better_ situation for customers or just a more lucrative situation for publishers. And the customer impact would not just be measured on “choice”, but on overall price/privacy impact. Measured by that, there’s no question in my mind that Apple’s doing a better job than people give them credit for.
- echelon 5y ago
  Do you lose with the web?
  - huhtenberg 5y ago
    We certainly didn't win.
    - oblio 5y ago
      It's the biggest repository of knowledge in history. It facilitates communication and trade on an unprecedented scale. Despite all the negative externalities that it also causes, I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects.
      - oarsinsync 5y ago
        > It's the biggest repository of knowledge in history This is totally true. Unfortunately, it's also the biggest repository of misinformation in history as well. > I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects On a macro scale, you're likely correct. If you're one of the unlucky people that suffers a significant negative consequence, your view may differ.
        oblio 5y ago
        > On a macro scale, you're likely correct. If you're one of the unlucky people that suffers a significant negative consequence, your view may differ. That could be said for anything, though. There isn't a thing on this planet that hasn't hurt anyone during its creation.
  - tl 5y ago
    We don't know yet. We live in a world where the web is seeing increased centralization on a variety of fronts with Google and Facebook among those leading the charge.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    Have you seen the web lately? I'll take the small, vetted, fan crafted internet of the late 90s over this SEO written content mill garbage mountain we have now.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 015a 5y ago
  Yup. I fully understand the complaint from Match (and others, like Netflix). Apple's app store payment policies are obviously and blatantly anti-competitive. But if you've ever tried to cancel an AT&T internet line or New York Times subscription, you begin to understand Apple's position. Consumers oftentimes have no recourse; Apple's (and, similarly Google's) subscription framework is the first time in history many of these companies have experienced the powerlessness their users feel when dealing with recurring payments. They don't like giving up power. It should come as no surprise that the companies most vocal about the payments monopolies are the ones who want to abuse the freedom Governments will hand them, in the name of maintaining a healthy competitive landscape. I think a balance needs to be struck; Apple needs to have its power reigned in, and I think that takes the form of a forced reduction in revenue share to 10% max (Visa maintains a global network of hundreds of thousands of diverse swipe terminals at ~3%; if Apple can't maintain some servers at 10%, they're incompetent and deserve to be driven into bankruptcy by this totally reasonable legislation). I don't feel that allowing alternate payment methods / subscription frameworks would actually benefit users/consumers, across any length of time, in any fashion whatsoever. I think subscription/payment management needs to be delegated to user accounts outside of any control of the service providers taking payment, as its an intrinsic and irreducible conflict of interest. Maybe that means Visa or whoever should start a "subscription and payments portal" that service providers have to integrate with. I don't know. But the way we've done it for 20+ years doesn't work, and Apple's way is absolutely better; its just not the best it can be, right now.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    This is such a bizarre response. You recognize there's a problem with cancelling subscriptions and instead of to the government to regulate the markets (which is their job) and mandate easy cancelling of subscriptions, you want Apple to do it? Do you want a government run by a corporation?
    - ThatPlayer 5y ago
      For example, California has already passed laws to make cancelling subscriptions easier.
jacquesm 5y ago
So, let's just state what's at stake here: who 'owns' the customer relationship. Apple wants to own the relationship, they do not want anybody else to have direct contact with 'their' customers outside of their platform because it allows them to turn the whole thing into a gigantic toll road.
- nomercy400 5y ago
  That's not true: Their customers most definitely want to have contact outside of their platorm. Phone calls, googling, navigating, gaming, chat apps, social media, web browsing. If it were true, you would be restricted to facetiming only with other apple users, only make phone calls to other Apple users, only visit 'the Apple internet' with their Safari browser. Whatsapp? Youtube? Facebook? Instagram? Epic? No no, those are not owned by Apple, and not part of their 'platform'. Suddenly the 'customer relationship' isn't all that clear, hence the national watchdogs looking into anti-competitive behavior.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood my argument. Customer here translates to 'the one who is in a billable relationship with a service provider'.
- criddell 5y ago
  Many of the Apple's customers (including me) see that as a feature and not a problem. I like that I can subscribe to something without having to share my personal information with another company. I understand that I end up paying more than I would otherwise, but Apple doesn't really compete on price. Perhaps if I was in the EU I would feel differently because they have better data protections.
  - travoc 5y ago
    I wonder if you would feel differently if the 30% premium you were paying to Apple on every digital purchase were transparently shown on the transaction.
dessant 5y ago
> The people said Apple has asked the Rotterdam District Court for an injunction to block publication of the ruling during its appeal. > A court spokesman confirmed the existence of the case to block publication, but could not say when a decision is expected. The proceedings are not open to the press or public.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > The proceedings are not open to the press or public. Can anyone explain the policy reason behind the secrecy?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I suspect that Apple is afraid that if the reasoning behind this became public that Apple's stock price would be strongly influenced and so they are trying to hide the information from the market. It will be interesting to see if there will be a net negative from the effect of the hiding by itself, after all now people are free to speculate and they might go further in their speculation than the actual ruling.
  - solidangle 5y ago
    Apple has filed a court case to block the publication of a report. Obviously the contents of the report will be discussed as part of the hearings. So if the hearings were public then the contents would become public as well, which would make the court case pointless. Hence the private hearings.
  - burpee 5y ago
    Not entirely illogical, if something is expected to generate a lot of media attention, the case may be kept private to prevent the 'court of public opinion' to influence the outcome. Everything is still documented and shared afterwards regardless of the outcome.
  - ArchOversight 5y ago
    Most court proceedings in The Netherlands are not open to the public or press, mostly for the privacy and protection of those involved with the case. Unlike the US where court cases are publicized and disseminated widely with the charges, but never with the outcome of the court case.
iruoy 5y ago
> ACM has not levied a fine against Apple, but demanded changes to the in-app payment system, the people said. The decision has not been seen by Reuters. What did they demand specifically?
ElectronShak 5y ago
duh..
netcan 5y ago
The frame, considering the overall context is kind of ridiculous: Apple "requiring software developers to use its in-app payment system" is anticompetitive Well shucks. Apple also controls who and what can be sold or distributed in the market, how it should be built. They control how much exposure apps get. Some of these controls are used more directly, or blatantly to "rig the market" than others... but these are just the current choices by Apple. It's not a rig. It's the OEM design. Apple rigging the app store market is like Apple penetrating icloud security. That's not a hack, it's a login. I can see a logic within the frame. If courts force Apple to allow a competing system, it will put downward pressure on what are (imo) indisputably monopoly prices. That's competition, in a neoclassical sense. There can be a big difference between no competition and some. OTOH, competitiveness within Apples' fully owned market seems like a silly frame to operate within. Competition between ice cream parlours within the walls of DisneyLand are at Mr Disney's discretion. They can decide all ice cream parlours will be subsidiaries, franchises or independants. They can set prices, ban ice cream, etc. Trying to deal with ice cream competitiveness in DisneyLand this way is a fool's errand. One court rules on a policy forcing Parlours to use Disney's insurance vendor, and price gouging. It's a random detail and maybe it does help out parlour owners lower costs. Disney have an infinite number of such options available though. A free market it'll never be.
- realusername 5y ago
  Having competition in the mobile app market is more important for the global & local economy than "ice cream parlours at disneyland"...
  - netcan 5y ago
    sure. I wasn't arguing for equal importance, or equal need for policy-level decisions.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  If people were forced to walk through Disneyland to get to work or live their daily lives, your analogy would be more apt.
- 5y ago
f6v 5y ago
I get that there’s an anti-monopoly sentiment. And we’ve all heard the arguments many time. Let’s not forget that mandatory cookie banners turned into a complete shit-show. They were supposed to benefit the users. But are they not just an annoying distraction? My point being, people might still use AppStore as they do. Just the whole government-mandated experience becomes much less convenient.
- berkes 5y ago
  Thats a clear fallacy. Just because an entirely different government entity (the EC) enforced a practice that has different outcome than expected, does not, in any way, predict how this private entity (a local market-watch and local court) will work.
endisneigh 5y ago
they should make the rules broader, e.g. any industry where a single participant holds more than X% of the market must do things complying with A, B and C.
- EastSmith 5y ago
  20% for X and you need to open sounds great.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Would you put that threshold at 40% because I doubt Apple holds that much of the market of all app stores.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    EU puts it right about there, yes. You can be found to be anti competitive in other ways, but 40% is already enough for the market dominance rules to apply to you. > According to case law, market shares of between 40 % and 55 % indicate a dominant position on the market (Eberhard, 2006). https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/642209/EPRS_IDA(2019)642209_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/6422...
    - r00fus 5y ago
      Does Apple have 40% of the app store market? That's what I'd question. How do you define such a market?
      - shadilay 5y ago
        Revenue probably.
        r00fus 5y ago
        That's not how you count it, right? Otherwise it simply leads to a race-to-the-bottom where an ad-supported product gets to bypass market regulation because they get their money in a different channel.
horsawlarway 5y ago
I've said it before, but I'll throw it in here too - Apple is going to lose this fight in basically every market except the US. It's very clear that their behavior is rent-seeking. If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products (alternative app stores) on the platform. Instead they arbitrarily prohibit any competition what-so-ever.
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  > If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products I don't think this is true. If there were multiple stores, then the one that is best for companies would win, not the on that is best for end-users. Users don't get a say in which store an app is published in.
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    Users get a say in which apps they purchase. I've no idea what people are whining about saying cancelling app subscriptions is hard. Never ran into this, and if I ever do, worst case credit card chargeback would put the unscrupulous vendor in its place. It's not Apple's job to hold my hand.
    - Aaargh20318 5y ago
      > Users get a say in which apps they purchase. You expect users to not get an app they want to buy just because they prefer a different app store ?
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Apple takes a cut since they give you visibility in their appstore. Are you saying that their argument is nonsense and that nobody finds apps they want to install in the appstore and instead people learn about apps in other ways? Then why should the app store take the huge 30% cut? And difficulty to install matters a great deal. If it is a few more clicks you will lose a ton of users because of it.
ffritz 5y ago
I want to point out that if you want to release an app, be it for fun or otherwise, it’s going to cost you 100$ per year to have Apple list it in the app store. One hundred dollars per year for the privilege of them judging your app and maybe even get it rejected. They made tinkering around so ridiculously unattractive, because every app needs a business model (unless you are okay with eating the 100$ every year). There need to be other stores or distribution methods. Desperately.
- s_dev 5y ago
  What offended me most about the $100 is that when Apple replied to 'Hey!' email they explicitly mentioned they had never charged Hey a penny for distributing their app on the App Store. They don't even consider the $100 Developer fee a real fee.
- sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
  > They made tinkering around so ridiculously unattractive 100$ a understaement,just keepting them workable between ios and xcode releases is non-trivial. myself I have about a 4-5 pretty apps that were useful (to me and a few people at least) that just don't work anymore.. I could spend time fixing them but I'm time limited and don't use macos as my primary platform anymore the intentional short shelflive of software on that platform is just crazy to me; like I know Apple does it to have the store 'clean it self up' over time but that's insane there's piles of software that just dosen't exist anymore like what happens if an accident happens and a solo developer passes-away? their work is as if it never existed
  - shadilay 5y ago
    Android has the same problem where they drop apps that don't target an API version released in the last 5 years or something. After losing all the apps I bought on early versions of iOS and Android it really soured me on buying anything so I haven't bought an mobile app in years. Photoshop CS2 still works on Windows though!
    - foepys 5y ago
shmerl 5y ago
What's even more anti-competitive is their ban on alternative stores. Why is no one addressing this elephant in the room?

371 points by d3nj4l 5y ago

_oyks 5y ago

Let's hope they don't take the incoming Apple bribes for a new office in Amsterdam or something

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

AlexandrB 5y ago

> They included a complaint from Match Group, owner of the popular dating service Tinder, which said Apple's rules were hindering it from direct communications with its customers about payments. As the Alien vs. Predator tagline said: whoever wins, we lose.

isaacfrond 5y ago
> The Dutch investigation into whether Apple's practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant market position was launched in 2019 but later reduced in scope to focus primarily on dating market apps. Apple might just remove dating apps from the app store for the Netherlands. Problem solved.
- emn13 5y ago
  I suspect your comment isn't entirely in good faith, but that might well be considered strong evidence of anti-competitive behavior.
emsy 5y ago
It didn’t have to be that way. If Apple had sensible policies that stand the test of regulatory scrutiny this wouldn’t happen. Now that lawmakers get involved I will expect the worst outcome for customers, or as you succinctly put it „we lose“.
- halostatue 5y ago
  From a purely consumer perspective, Apple's policies are eminently sensible. Allowing external IAP makes it harder if not impossible to enforce simple cancellation. If Apple allows external IAP, but _also_ requires strict dispute resolution and simple subscription cancellation, that would probably be deemed anticompetitive as well, even though it's thoroughly pro-consumer. The problem here is that the regulatory scrutiny is only on one dimension, not the full picture. And in the full picture, Apple's policies are eminently reasonable—if their fees are a bit high.
  - shagie 5y ago
    > Allowing external IAP makes it harder if not impossible to enforce simple cancellation. Thus the looming changes: Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776960
  - jorams 5y ago
    > If Apple allows external IAP, but _also_ requires strict dispute resolution and simple subscription cancellation, that would probably be deemed anticompetitive as well, even though it's thoroughly pro-consumer. Why would that be considered anticompetitive?
    - halostatue 5y ago
      I personally don’t think that it would be. I also have very little problem with Apple’s current stance on IAP and _who_ actually owns the customer relationship. (Quibbles can be made about percentages. If 30% is too high for Apple, maybe we should be taking a much closer look at a _lot_ of retailer relationships.) However, the same people who say that it’s anticompetitive for Apple to control the payment flow are likely to say that _any_ impingement of Apple on the customer relationship is anticompetitive. These are the people who don’t actually _care_ about the customer relationship, like the NYTimes subscription department, or the companies that bank on customers forgetting to cancel their subscription for months at a time or not wanting to spend time on the phone to fight over a $1.29/month subscription fee. IMO, antitrust/anticompetition investigations tend to be _far_ too limited in their scope (they look only at one or two aspects and not the big picture of what's happening). I remember a few years ago when Apple had worked with publishers to establish a new standard ebook contract for publishers and marketplaces. It was one that would have (slightly) raised the prices of ebooks, but replaced the unilaterally imposed contract that Amazon provided. Apple got in trouble over it, even the result would have been a _better_ and more _competitive_ marketplace and not one controlled by Amazon. I have opinions on what should be done with the app stores that would _probably_ fix a lot of the issues, but any changes to the app stores need to look at whether it would be a _better_ situation for customers or just a more lucrative situation for publishers. And the customer impact would not just be measured on “choice”, but on overall price/privacy impact. Measured by that, there’s no question in my mind that Apple’s doing a better job than people give them credit for.
echelon 5y ago
Do you lose with the web?
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  We certainly didn't win.
  - oblio 5y ago
    It's the biggest repository of knowledge in history. It facilitates communication and trade on an unprecedented scale. Despite all the negative externalities that it also causes, I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects.
    - oarsinsync 5y ago
      > It's the biggest repository of knowledge in history This is totally true. Unfortunately, it's also the biggest repository of misinformation in history as well. > I fail to see how they could outdo its positive aspects On a macro scale, you're likely correct. If you're one of the unlucky people that suffers a significant negative consequence, your view may differ.
      - oblio 5y ago
        > On a macro scale, you're likely correct. If you're one of the unlucky people that suffers a significant negative consequence, your view may differ. That could be said for anything, though. There isn't a thing on this planet that hasn't hurt anyone during its creation.
- tl 5y ago
  We don't know yet. We live in a world where the web is seeing increased centralization on a variety of fronts with Google and Facebook among those leading the charge.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  Have you seen the web lately? I'll take the small, vetted, fan crafted internet of the late 90s over this SEO written content mill garbage mountain we have now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
015a 5y ago
Yup. I fully understand the complaint from Match (and others, like Netflix). Apple's app store payment policies are obviously and blatantly anti-competitive. But if you've ever tried to cancel an AT&T internet line or New York Times subscription, you begin to understand Apple's position. Consumers oftentimes have no recourse; Apple's (and, similarly Google's) subscription framework is the first time in history many of these companies have experienced the powerlessness their users feel when dealing with recurring payments. They don't like giving up power. It should come as no surprise that the companies most vocal about the payments monopolies are the ones who want to abuse the freedom Governments will hand them, in the name of maintaining a healthy competitive landscape. I think a balance needs to be struck; Apple needs to have its power reigned in, and I think that takes the form of a forced reduction in revenue share to 10% max (Visa maintains a global network of hundreds of thousands of diverse swipe terminals at ~3%; if Apple can't maintain some servers at 10%, they're incompetent and deserve to be driven into bankruptcy by this totally reasonable legislation). I don't feel that allowing alternate payment methods / subscription frameworks would actually benefit users/consumers, across any length of time, in any fashion whatsoever. I think subscription/payment management needs to be delegated to user accounts outside of any control of the service providers taking payment, as its an intrinsic and irreducible conflict of interest. Maybe that means Visa or whoever should start a "subscription and payments portal" that service providers have to integrate with. I don't know. But the way we've done it for 20+ years doesn't work, and Apple's way is absolutely better; its just not the best it can be, right now.
- shadilay 5y ago
  This is such a bizarre response. You recognize there's a problem with cancelling subscriptions and instead of to the government to regulate the markets (which is their job) and mandate easy cancelling of subscriptions, you want Apple to do it? Do you want a government run by a corporation?
  - ThatPlayer 5y ago
    For example, California has already passed laws to make cancelling subscriptions easier.

jacquesm 5y ago

So, let's just state what's at stake here: who 'owns' the customer relationship. Apple wants to own the relationship, they do not want anybody else to have direct contact with 'their' customers outside of their platform because it allows them to turn the whole thing into a gigantic toll road.

nomercy400 5y ago
That's not true: Their customers most definitely want to have contact outside of their platorm. Phone calls, googling, navigating, gaming, chat apps, social media, web browsing. If it were true, you would be restricted to facetiming only with other apple users, only make phone calls to other Apple users, only visit 'the Apple internet' with their Safari browser. Whatsapp? Youtube? Facebook? Instagram? Epic? No no, those are not owned by Apple, and not part of their 'platform'. Suddenly the 'customer relationship' isn't all that clear, hence the national watchdogs looking into anti-competitive behavior.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I think you misunderstood my argument. Customer here translates to 'the one who is in a billable relationship with a service provider'.
criddell 5y ago
Many of the Apple's customers (including me) see that as a feature and not a problem. I like that I can subscribe to something without having to share my personal information with another company. I understand that I end up paying more than I would otherwise, but Apple doesn't really compete on price. Perhaps if I was in the EU I would feel differently because they have better data protections.
- travoc 5y ago
  I wonder if you would feel differently if the 30% premium you were paying to Apple on every digital purchase were transparently shown on the transaction.

dessant 5y ago

> The people said Apple has asked the Rotterdam District Court for an injunction to block publication of the ruling during its appeal. > A court spokesman confirmed the existence of the case to block publication, but could not say when a decision is expected. The proceedings are not open to the press or public.

elliekelly 5y ago
> The proceedings are not open to the press or public. Can anyone explain the policy reason behind the secrecy?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I suspect that Apple is afraid that if the reasoning behind this became public that Apple's stock price would be strongly influenced and so they are trying to hide the information from the market. It will be interesting to see if there will be a net negative from the effect of the hiding by itself, after all now people are free to speculate and they might go further in their speculation than the actual ruling.
- solidangle 5y ago
  Apple has filed a court case to block the publication of a report. Obviously the contents of the report will be discussed as part of the hearings. So if the hearings were public then the contents would become public as well, which would make the court case pointless. Hence the private hearings.
- burpee 5y ago
  Not entirely illogical, if something is expected to generate a lot of media attention, the case may be kept private to prevent the 'court of public opinion' to influence the outcome. Everything is still documented and shared afterwards regardless of the outcome.
- ArchOversight 5y ago
  Most court proceedings in The Netherlands are not open to the public or press, mostly for the privacy and protection of those involved with the case. Unlike the US where court cases are publicized and disseminated widely with the charges, but never with the outcome of the court case.

iruoy 5y ago

> ACM has not levied a fine against Apple, but demanded changes to the in-app payment system, the people said. The decision has not been seen by Reuters. What did they demand specifically?

ElectronShak 5y ago

duh..

netcan 5y ago

The frame, considering the overall context is kind of ridiculous: Apple "requiring software developers to use its in-app payment system" is anticompetitive Well shucks. Apple also controls who and what can be sold or distributed in the market, how it should be built. They control how much exposure apps get. Some of these controls are used more directly, or blatantly to "rig the market" than others... but these are just the current choices by Apple. It's not a rig. It's the OEM design. Apple rigging the app store market is like Apple penetrating icloud security. That's not a hack, it's a login. I can see a logic within the frame. If courts force Apple to allow a competing system, it will put downward pressure on what are (imo) indisputably monopoly prices. That's competition, in a neoclassical sense. There can be a big difference between no competition and some. OTOH, competitiveness within Apples' fully owned market seems like a silly frame to operate within. Competition between ice cream parlours within the walls of DisneyLand are at Mr Disney's discretion. They can decide all ice cream parlours will be subsidiaries, franchises or independants. They can set prices, ban ice cream, etc. Trying to deal with ice cream competitiveness in DisneyLand this way is a fool's errand. One court rules on a policy forcing Parlours to use Disney's insurance vendor, and price gouging. It's a random detail and maybe it does help out parlour owners lower costs. Disney have an infinite number of such options available though. A free market it'll never be.

realusername 5y ago
Having competition in the mobile app market is more important for the global & local economy than "ice cream parlours at disneyland"...
- netcan 5y ago
  sure. I wasn't arguing for equal importance, or equal need for policy-level decisions.
CuriouslyC 5y ago
If people were forced to walk through Disneyland to get to work or live their daily lives, your analogy would be more apt.
5y ago

f6v 5y ago

I get that there’s an anti-monopoly sentiment. And we’ve all heard the arguments many time. Let’s not forget that mandatory cookie banners turned into a complete shit-show. They were supposed to benefit the users. But are they not just an annoying distraction? My point being, people might still use AppStore as they do. Just the whole government-mandated experience becomes much less convenient.

berkes 5y ago
Thats a clear fallacy. Just because an entirely different government entity (the EC) enforced a practice that has different outcome than expected, does not, in any way, predict how this private entity (a local market-watch and local court) will work.

endisneigh 5y ago

they should make the rules broader, e.g. any industry where a single participant holds more than X% of the market must do things complying with A, B and C.

EastSmith 5y ago
20% for X and you need to open sounds great.
r00fus 5y ago
Would you put that threshold at 40% because I doubt Apple holds that much of the market of all app stores.
- Jensson 5y ago
  EU puts it right about there, yes. You can be found to be anti competitive in other ways, but 40% is already enough for the market dominance rules to apply to you. > According to case law, market shares of between 40 % and 55 % indicate a dominant position on the market (Eberhard, 2006). https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/642209/EPRS_IDA(2019)642209_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/6422...
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Does Apple have 40% of the app store market? That's what I'd question. How do you define such a market?
    - shadilay 5y ago
      Revenue probably.
      - r00fus 5y ago
        That's not how you count it, right? Otherwise it simply leads to a race-to-the-bottom where an ad-supported product gets to bypass market regulation because they get their money in a different channel.

horsawlarway 5y ago

I've said it before, but I'll throw it in here too - Apple is going to lose this fight in basically every market except the US. It's very clear that their behavior is rent-seeking. If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products (alternative app stores) on the platform. Instead they arbitrarily prohibit any competition what-so-ever.

Aaargh20318 5y ago
> If their product (the app store) is genuinely better for users & companies - it should be able to out compete other products I don't think this is true. If there were multiple stores, then the one that is best for companies would win, not the on that is best for end-users. Users don't get a say in which store an app is published in.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  Users get a say in which apps they purchase. I've no idea what people are whining about saying cancelling app subscriptions is hard. Never ran into this, and if I ever do, worst case credit card chargeback would put the unscrupulous vendor in its place. It's not Apple's job to hold my hand.
  - Aaargh20318 5y ago
    > Users get a say in which apps they purchase. You expect users to not get an app they want to buy just because they prefer a different app store ?
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Apple takes a cut since they give you visibility in their appstore. Are you saying that their argument is nonsense and that nobody finds apps they want to install in the appstore and instead people learn about apps in other ways? Then why should the app store take the huge 30% cut? And difficulty to install matters a great deal. If it is a few more clicks you will lose a ton of users because of it.

ffritz 5y ago

I want to point out that if you want to release an app, be it for fun or otherwise, it’s going to cost you 100$ per year to have Apple list it in the app store. One hundred dollars per year for the privilege of them judging your app and maybe even get it rejected. They made tinkering around so ridiculously unattractive, because every app needs a business model (unless you are okay with eating the 100$ every year). There need to be other stores or distribution methods. Desperately.

s_dev 5y ago
What offended me most about the $100 is that when Apple replied to 'Hey!' email they explicitly mentioned they had never charged Hey a penny for distributing their app on the App Store. They don't even consider the $100 Developer fee a real fee.
sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
> They made tinkering around so ridiculously unattractive 100$ a understaement,just keepting them workable between ios and xcode releases is non-trivial. myself I have about a 4-5 pretty apps that were useful (to me and a few people at least) that just don't work anymore.. I could spend time fixing them but I'm time limited and don't use macos as my primary platform anymore the intentional short shelflive of software on that platform is just crazy to me; like I know Apple does it to have the store 'clean it self up' over time but that's insane there's piles of software that just dosen't exist anymore like what happens if an accident happens and a solo developer passes-away? their work is as if it never existed
- shadilay 5y ago
  Android has the same problem where they drop apps that don't target an API version released in the last 5 years or something. After losing all the apps I bought on early versions of iOS and Android it really soured me on buying anything so I haven't bought an mobile app in years. Photoshop CS2 still works on Windows though!
  - foepys 5y ago

shmerl 5y ago

What's even more anti-competitive is their ban on alternative stores. Why is no one addressing this elephant in the room?