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Depends on how you think about monopolies and bundling. For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape. But there are some a

Depends on how you think about monopolies and bundling. For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape. But there are some areas where they have a very strong market position. The revenue for paid apps in America skews very heavily to the Apple App Store (people make apps for iOS only in the US but never Android only). The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable. The switching costs to consumers are very high and people buy phones because of core features (battery, camera, speakers, connectivity, display, touch screen). The availability and pricing of paid apps is such an afterthought for consumers as to be irrelevant. In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue. But this is Hacker News. A lot of developers hang out here. Some of whom have certainly had some bad experiences with the policies, restrictions and fees imposed by the App Store.

smoldesu 4y ago
> For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape. Not really. The point is less about market positioning and more about building fair platforms. Apple wants to frame themselves as an underdog competitor in the global economy, but they fail because they can't even build a fair or open platform when given total freedom to do so. This "failure" has made them a lot of money, but it's also come to the detriment of users everywhere, whether they know it or not. The law exists explicitly to push companies like Apple along when they get too fat and rest on their Carnegie laurels. > The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable. Someone ought to tell the Mac people this, they'll be heartbroken. > In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue. Last year Apple made more from services than they did from iPhone hardware. That's not just a "fraction" anymore.

smoldesu 4y ago

> For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape. Not really. The point is less about market positioning and more about building fair platforms. Apple wants to frame themselves as an underdog competitor in the global economy, but they fail because they can't even build a fair or open platform when given total freedom to do so. This "failure" has made them a lot of money, but it's also come to the detriment of users everywhere, whether they know it or not. The law exists explicitly to push companies like Apple along when they get too fat and rest on their Carnegie laurels. > The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable. Someone ought to tell the Mac people this, they'll be heartbroken. > In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue. Last year Apple made more from services than they did from iPhone hardware. That's not just a "fraction" anymore.