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> The App Store continues to promote competition, drive innovation, and expand opportunity, and we’re proud of its profound contributions to both users and deve

> The App Store continues to promote competition, drive innovation, and expand opportunity, and we’re proud of its profound contributions to both users and developers around the world. How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? (I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about) UPDATE: The comments seem to imply I am giving my opinion on this case. I am not. I am commenting on the PR-speak given here. The app store does not, IMO, "promote" competition...it may arguably not hinder it, but given what the case is about, it is, I think, more competitive if others could use different methods of selling apps on iOS. That doesn't mean it is better, right, more fair, or anything else... just more "competitive" IMO. In short, I'm commenting on the wording in their press release only.

iscrewyou 3y ago
The competition (in Apple’s eyes and I agree with it because of how shady some of these companies are that want to make launchers for all their apps) isn’t about apps in the App Store. It’s the competition of being an App Store in itself compared to Google, Amazon, etc. If you read it with that lens, the line makes a lot more sense.
Arcanum-XIII 3y ago
'Cause you can have as many clone of the last en vogue game without any problem. So, competition. Not a very positive one, but still :\
_boffin_ 3y ago
> monopoly on iOS? Way to drill that category all the way down to IOS to ensure that you're able to use that "monopoly" keyword. The deli that's in my complex has a monopoly on buying and obtaining wine if i don't want to drive anywhere or use a phone to order some via some delivery app.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I wonder why McDonalds has been allowed to have a monopoly on McChicken sandwiches for so long.
  - _boffin_ 3y ago
    I'm so beyond irked that i'm not able to purchase a del taco chicken taco from McDonalds.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    I'd love to finally see consistency in food quality with a Chick-Fil-A McGriddle.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    McDonald's is the app, and a McChicken sandwich a feature of the McDonald's app. Phone operating systems are the malls, and for the vast bulk of us, unfortunately the only areas in the city zoned to have commercial app buildings.
- garbagecoder 3y ago
  The reason people say this is because that argument has been put out there by the other multi-billion dollar corpos trying to take some of Apple's slices of the pie. None of this has the consumer at heart at all.
- m00x 3y ago
  This is the perfect definition of a strawman argument. There are 2 dominating app stores: - Google/Android app store - IOS app store They have a duopoly in the mobile market, and they each have a monopoly on their platform. The deli comparison is asinine since there are millions of delis vs 2.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    This is what Epic tried to define the market as, but the court instead went with "mobile gaming transactions".
    - nodamage 3y ago
      That's how theses cases usually work. Antitrust claimants want to define the market as narrowly as possible for their own benefit. Defendants want to define it as wide as possible for the same reason. It's up to the court to figure out what the actual market is, and not what the (biased) parties want it to be.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    You can side load in other app stores in Android. iOS started out with side-loading, but then this was crushed by Apple's exercise of their absolute control of the operating system.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      iOS didn't start with side-loading. Do you have a source for this ?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        What mullingtover refers to.
      - judge2020 3y ago
        The first App Store was Cydia. Technically side-loading with how Apple failed to predict the dedication of breaking the (trivial, at the time) security to add more native apps to the home screen. https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/28/debian-style-installation-arrives-on-iphone/ https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/28/debian-style-installatio...
- summerlight 3y ago
  Relevant market is not a vague rhetorical definition as you such described. US FTC has not attempted to define a relevant market for digital apps, but EU clearly considers iOS alone as a relevant market and thus regulates it with DMA. To give you an idea of hypothetical regulation scenario: You want to move to an Android app. Sure you gotta need to change your phone as well. This is likely much more expensive than the app itself, thus it may make Android/iOS apps non-interchangeable. If FTC finds that this is expensive enough so most people won't make such move even if Apple decides to considerably increase the app store tax, then the App Store itself is a relevant market thus monopoly. We don't know the legal conclusion since FTC hasn't done such study (this is a very complex process that takes several years with huge uncertainties, this is why politicians prefer direct regulation via legislation), but many experts believe that Apple is not in a very safe position.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  If I move off iOS I lose stuff I bought on iOS. Software licenses aren't portable across platforms, and there's lots of iOS software that doesn't even have an Android version (or vice versa). The software industry has fought tooth and nail to criminalize any attempt by users to resist this. Emulation software is legal, copying software you own to run it on different hardware is legal, but the digital locks designed to keep you from pirating apps make it illegal to migrate your apps even though it would otherwise be legal to do so. If you try to create a third mobile platform to compete, you will fail. We know this because of Microsoft and Amazon's failed attempts at making phone OSes. In Amazon's case, they actually used the same OS Google did, but Google refused to support it. And you can't legally port licenses over from Google Play to get Google's apps running on Fire OS. So the Fire Phone - a phone running Google's OS with Amazon's tweaks - could not use any Google apps. Anything on a Google service had to be used through the web browser. Windows Mobile was even worse: nobody wanted to support it natively. And again, you can't sell something that isn't an iPhone or Google-blessed Android that lets you buy App Store or Google Play apps and run them. This is the same situation for everything else, too. Amazon has a monopoly on books because Kindle and Audible books cannot be copied onto non-Amazon devices or reader apps. So nobody wants to buy books outside of Amazon's platform, because it'll split their collections. Nintendo spends extraordinary amounts of time and effort legally harassing anyone who publicly uses their games on non-Nintendo hardware. Same for Sony and Microsoft. To bring this back to your deli thing, imagine if you weren't allowed to have your deli's wine and other wine in the same apartment. There's chips in the wine bottles that will poison the wine if you do that, and there's a federal law prohibiting you from removing the chip, and prohibiting even discussing how to remove the chip. So you can switch wine stores, but you have to throw out all your wine that you already have. That is the current situation of software distribution as a consumer in 2023.
  - chii 3y ago
    > If you try to create a third mobile platform to compete, you will fail. but apple wasn't the one preventing these from succeeding. they failed on their own. On the other hand, it is reasonable to conclude that Netscape didn't fail on their own, but that Microsoft _prevented_ netscape from gaining marketshare by preloading a competing browser; such a preloading can only have occurred with a monopoly on operating systems. Therefore, the monopoly abuse was to leverage its monopoly position in one market, to prevent competition a different market. So despite the fact that I also hate the appstore and walled gardens, apple _did not_ use their apple device dominance to _prevent_ android versions of an app from existing/competing. The complaint about walled gardens from people is that of lack of open access - not that of monopoly. I suspect that new laws needs to be introduced to break open walled gardens - i want to call these "interoperability" laws. It's in the interest of society for systems to be interoperable. This will not only concern apple devices, but things like EV charging networks, computer networks, and data interchange apis, and digital ownership of data. Imagine if by purchasing a CD or DVD, you are only allowed to play that disk on an authorized device! Now imagine instead of a physical disk, you buy a digital "disk" - a game, or music - but you're locked into the vendor's platform!
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Apple is a monopoly... on their own platform. Which by itself is not convincing, legally, at all. Sony has a monopoly on PlayStation games, Xbox has a monopoly on Xbox games, Nintendo has a monopoly on Nintendo games, Apple has a monopoly on iOS apps. What's to separate Apple from the game consoles? Legally, there is no such thing as a "general purpose computing device" despite the myths - they are legally in the exact same bucket. Just because a device can do more or less than another device (a game console versus a phone), or just because a device is subsidized by the apps (a game console, whereas iOS doesn't have that), doesn't change the status of it legally. Would you say that PlayStation is a monopoly? Probably not - you know they are competing with Xbox and Nintendo. Apple makes the same argument and legally it has held up - they are competing with Android and Windows and Amazon. You don't have to like the competition from Android or Amazon, but legally, there's competition and that's all that matters. At least for right now.
- amelius 3y ago
  It depends on how you categorize their products. In the space of privacy-friendly phones, Apple has a monopoly.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    "In the space of privacy-friendly phones, Apple has a monopoly." A. There's no legally recognized market for "privacy-friendly phones." B. "Privacy-friendly phones" is an ill-defined category, with "privacy" meaning different things to different people. Does a phone that blocks trackers qualify? Or does it have to protect me from rogue governments? There's no legal standard for what makes a device "privacy-friendly." Because of that, you are complaining that Apple has a monopoly in a market you just made up, which would be laughed out of court. You might as well claim Apple has a monopoly on phones with Lightning ports. C. There's always GrapheneOS, which is free for anyone who wants it. There's also CalyxOS. You might claim they don't serve your purpose, but the law doesn't care an ounce about your specific purpose. There's generally-recognized competition in the vague category. D. Having a monopoly is not illegal in the US. It's abusing your monopoly that's illegal. You would have to show Apple intentionally and specifically suppressed the development of alternative privacy-friendly phones by actively abusing their market power, which nobody is alleging.
judge2020 3y ago
This is the crux of the issue. Pretty much every opinion in the ruling has one opinion or another about how the case would've gone differently if the "market" defined by the district was broader. In this case, the market was "mobile gaming transactions". The district court analyzed anticompetitive effects in terms of increases in the cost of mobile gaming transactions—the court’s relevant market. But the court could have found greater increases in costs if its analysis concerned Epic’s markets, and this would change a properly conducted balancing analysis. In essence, any balancing done out of the context of a relevant market necessarily involves putting a thumb on the balancing scale.
gnicholas 3y ago
> monopoly on iOS What you're doing is assuming "the relevant market" is very narrow. In antitrust law, they say the case is won or lost on how broadly the relevant market is defined. Does Amazon compete against every brick and mortar store, or just other online merchants? The subsequent legal analysis looks very different depending on the answer to that question.
- garbagecoder 3y ago
  Right. If every plaintiff could just define a market a certain way, they would never lose a single anti-trust case. It isn't sustainable that way. Most people who dislike Apple have already found themselves a nice Android phone on it for less money with several app stores.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > every plaintiff could just define a market a certain way, they would never lose a single anti-trust case This goes both ways. My corner bodega has a monopoly over its intersection. In practice, we need legislation defining anti-competitive behavior for platforms and Thompsonian aggregators [1]. I haven't seen anyone propose a sensible, predictable framework. [1] https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      I like the chokepoint concept popularized by Cory Doctorow.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > the chokepoint concept popularized by Cory Doctorow Skimmed an interview Doctorow gave for Time [1]. I get the gripe. But I’m failing to find a unique, actionable definition. Better concise source? [1] https://time.com/6219423/chokepoint-capitalism-doctorow-giblin/ https://time.com/6219423/chokepoint-capitalism-doctorow-gibl...
garbagecoder 3y ago
"Monopoly on iOS" isn't a thing and no one should have ever acted like it was a thing. iOS doesn't have dominant market share, so we aren't even talking about smartphone apps. I have a monopoly on parking spots at my house, but that's not a relevant market. I'm for right to repair, I'm agains the 30% markup on the App Store, and I think Apple in general should make it easier for pro users to customize, but you the novel legal theories to consider someone with a smaller market share than a competitor in the relevant market (unless they are colluding with them in an oligopoly) is anarchy. You can't just say something is a market. It would never end the anti-trust litigation out there.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > iOS doesn't have dominant market share, so we aren't even talking about smartphone apps. iPhone has a 57% market share in the United States, the jurisdiction of the case.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    And if you own 57% of the properties in Monopoly you still might lose. The standard, for better or worse, in the US for "wielding monopoly power" is consumer harm not market share. If you can't convince the courts customers are harmed by the status quo it'll be a uphill climb.
    - garbagecoder 3y ago
      If this case had any legs, someone would've made progress against Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft consoles in the past. They haven't, those are more locked down and much easier to demonstrate the price harm when games are $60 and marketed to children. You say "for better or worse" and I agree, but people don't want to hear that. They want to hear [company I don't like] should be punished and [company I like] shouldn't.
  - garbagecoder 3y ago
    Cherrypicking one quarter to make your point is pretty desperate and still irrelevant. When the case started it was less than 50%. Now what? A textbook monopoly price antitrust case involves people who are virtually the only player, or a combination of almost all or all of the players. And the court found that they didn't do anything with whatever marketshare they had and this is obvious to people who were paying attention. What about consoles? They are even more locked down than phones, yet the Internet seems to have a lot less to say about that, even though it's been that way for decades. You can think Apple is a bad company. You can think they are too big. But you can't just wish the antitrust laws to be completely unworkable to punish them. That's the not the rule of law. That's the rule of "I don't like them."
nodamage 3y ago
The entire point of the court ruling is that it is not legally considered a monopoly, at least according to US antitrust law.
- m00x 3y ago
  According to the judge's interpretation of the US antitrust law*
  - Spivak 3y ago
    That's true of literally every ruling of every case in history. If you're implying that they ruled incorrectly you're gonna have to provide an actual legal basis. A lot of court rulings are basically come down to, "I don't like the logic but it follows" and you just have to live with them.
  - nodamage 3y ago
    Just like every other law? The legal definition of a monopoly has been refined over decades of case law, this ruling comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the specific requirements of that definition (which were clearly not met by Epic here).
    - m00x 3y ago
      Yes, hence why it can go to higher courts and have another judge interpret the case. The judge makes a decision on their interpretation of the case and the law. This is a very important distinction in decisions.
      - simondotau 3y ago
        Epic failed spectacularly. They couldn't prove a monopoly, and even if they could, they were not able to point to any instance where Apple abused a monopoly position to turn the screws on customers or developers. There's really no interpretation needed.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? The court did not decide that the relevant market was iOS only, as Epic wanted. > A threshold issue in any antitrust case is defining the “relevant market.” Here, Epic argued that the relevant market is Apple’s iOS system. Apple argued that the relevant market is the market for all digital video games, where it is one of many players. The court disagreed with both sides, and it instead defined the relevant market as “digital mobile gaming transactions.” Under this formulation, the court found that Apple has a 52–57% market share in the “digital mobile gaming transactions” market. But this was not enough for the court to conclude Apple has monopoly power. https://www.klgates.com/Court-Issues-Mixed-Ruling-in-Epic-v-Apple-Antitrust-Trial-10-6-2021 https://www.klgates.com/Court-Issues-Mixed-Ruling-in-Epic-v-... This article is about Epic losing their appeal of the lower court's rulings.
- deleted 3y ago
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- giobox 3y ago
  And this should be the first question almost anyone asks themselves in a discussion about an anti-trust/monopoly case - defining "the market" is the lynchpin upon which much of antitrust law works both in Europe and the United States. Also be wary of comments in this thread that don't weigh this most important element of the entire process well. All too often these discussions on anti-trust issues become meaningless on this site because everyone involved is using a personal definition for "the marketplace". Step one of any attempt to claim Apple holds a monopoly will require you to define exactly what the market is, in quite specific terms, and have the court agree. That didn't happen for Epic here.
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    Yep. It really feels like a bunch of kids read up on ‘90s Microsoft, internalised a third-hand wildly simplified definition of ‘antitrust’, and used it to add a moral high-ground angle to what is essentially an iOS power user feature request. It’s often the first step in a whole lot of doublespeak. “This will set everybody free”, but at the same time, “this doesn’t present a security issue because nobody will use it”. To be clear, I think that the government should storm Apple Park with buns glazing and force them to do a more reasonable degree of rent-seeking. I’m not going to pretend that this is for any reason other than “I think that 30% is a dick move”. You don’t just get to pretend that Android doesn’t exist, or that the vast majority of ways that people communicate aren’t cross-platform, or that IOS has any material network effect whatsoever. So you really end up with two camps, one camp who always stop short of saying “iOS is just better in my eyes, and I want to be able to do more with my phone.” And the other camp is…let’s be honest…Android users. And the mere fact that there’s so many people in this camp I think directly contradicts any assertion that there’s a monopoly in the first place.
dylan604 3y ago
>How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? Maybe they don't mean competition between app stores, but between apps within the store itself? Look at how many apps are clones of other apps. If they didn't promote competition, they would shut down all of the clones. /s
shmerl 3y ago
> The App Store continues to promote competition This sounds like "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength".
deleted 3y ago
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uncletaco 3y ago
You use IMO twice in your edit how are you not giving your opinion?
- adamwk 3y ago
  GP is saying their opinion is on the PR statement, not the courts ruling
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? (I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about) They’re talking about apps. Before the App Store (and the android store etc) finding, buying and installing apps was an incredibly painful experience that few developers or users bothered with. The app stores have promoted a massive leap in the number of apps available (perhaps too many) giving small app developers the ability to publicise and publish apps competing with bigger developers.
- eddieroger 3y ago
  It also gives a relatively (/relatively/) equal footing to all apps, short of editor's picks and sponsored results. If you want a podcast app, you will see Apple's own next to something made by a firm of 50 engineers, next to an option made by a 16 year old on a second-hand MacBook Pro. This is in contrast to trying to get on the shelves of Best Buy or CompUSA or Babbages, or anything analog before it.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    That relies on your definition of "relative" being relative to garbage. Apple runs Google-style App Store search ads[0] that get pushed above everything else, pre-installs (and sometimes forces) their clients on the user, and has access to entitlements that others do not. There are a lot of areas for scrutiny. This ruling feels like the can is being kicked further down the road, and with the European regulation coming in hot I expect there to be more debate here. Separating Apple's business practices from their personal policies will probably be where this discussion ends. [0] https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/
palijer 3y ago
We had an app update rejected because we mentioned an android version of our app in the release notes. What marketing says and what a company does don't need to align anymore sadly.
zer0zzz 3y ago
lol competition. Anyone ever notice how every single recommendation and app ranking editors choice list on apples AppStore seems to be weaponized against apples competitors?
chwa982 3y ago
Lobbying and pandering
realusername 3y ago
> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? (I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about) No need to go that far, the couple Google / Apple is a duopoly without any competition, regardless of their marketshare. So you can say that there's no competition on mobile marketplaces at all. (I'm ignoring irrelevant marketplaces such as Samsung store or Amazon app store which are a rounding error at best)
dustedcodes 3y ago
> The comments seem to imply I am giving my opinion on this case. I am not. I am commenting on the PR-speak given here. You acknowledge that this is PR speak, so what's so hard to understand that the PR line is to say that a market store promotes competition? > I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about As you identified it yourself, it's PR speak, PR doesn't have to address the court case specifically, it merely promotes the App Store in its current form by simply stating a simple fact that sounds beneficial to Apple's case. Overall Apple is right, the App Store promotes competition and has driven a lot of innovation and expanded the opportunities of developers around the world. At the end of the day iOS could not allow third party apps AT ALL. iPhones could just be self contained devices with only the software on them which Apple has developed themselves. It would be like a smart fridge or toaster. You cannot load a different app into your smart fridge and nobody thinks this is anti-competitive. So given that not allowing any third party apps was the status quo in the early days of iPhones, the fact that Apple opened up and created a market place where developers can promote and advertise their own apps to be purchased and loaded onto people's iPhones is a HUGE STEP towards promoting competition, innovation and opportunity.
015a 3y ago
Their argument would be: the App Store has a home page and search results, both of which do have an advertising model, and competitors to Apple applications appear in both these locations regularly. They promote competition by allowing competition into the app store. Yes, it is the absolute bare minimum, but you also have to remember that the standards for anti-trust enforcement in the united states are extremely low.
drw85 3y ago
From a customers perspective, does the multiple stores approach on Android benefit me in any way? I now get bombarded with conflicting updates for apps from multiple stores. They all try to get in each others way and it's much harder to figure out what to install and from where. I greatly prefer the Apple app store, where i can be reasonably sure that i'm not downloading a bunch of malware every time i look for an app. The absolute king of this mess is the windows store. There is basically 50 malwares for every possible keyword in that absolute garbage patch of a store.

iscrewyou 3y ago

The competition (in Apple’s eyes and I agree with it because of how shady some of these companies are that want to make launchers for all their apps) isn’t about apps in the App Store. It’s the competition of being an App Store in itself compared to Google, Amazon, etc. If you read it with that lens, the line makes a lot more sense.

Arcanum-XIII 3y ago

'Cause you can have as many clone of the last en vogue game without any problem. So, competition. Not a very positive one, but still :\

_boffin_ 3y ago

> monopoly on iOS? Way to drill that category all the way down to IOS to ensure that you're able to use that "monopoly" keyword. The deli that's in my complex has a monopoly on buying and obtaining wine if i don't want to drive anywhere or use a phone to order some via some delivery app.

bee_rider 3y ago
I wonder why McDonalds has been allowed to have a monopoly on McChicken sandwiches for so long.
- _boffin_ 3y ago
  I'm so beyond irked that i'm not able to purchase a del taco chicken taco from McDonalds.
- judge2020 3y ago
  I'd love to finally see consistency in food quality with a Chick-Fil-A McGriddle.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  McDonald's is the app, and a McChicken sandwich a feature of the McDonald's app. Phone operating systems are the malls, and for the vast bulk of us, unfortunately the only areas in the city zoned to have commercial app buildings.
garbagecoder 3y ago
The reason people say this is because that argument has been put out there by the other multi-billion dollar corpos trying to take some of Apple's slices of the pie. None of this has the consumer at heart at all.
m00x 3y ago
This is the perfect definition of a strawman argument. There are 2 dominating app stores: - Google/Android app store - IOS app store They have a duopoly in the mobile market, and they each have a monopoly on their platform. The deli comparison is asinine since there are millions of delis vs 2.
- judge2020 3y ago
  This is what Epic tried to define the market as, but the court instead went with "mobile gaming transactions".
  - nodamage 3y ago
    That's how theses cases usually work. Antitrust claimants want to define the market as narrowly as possible for their own benefit. Defendants want to define it as wide as possible for the same reason. It's up to the court to figure out what the actual market is, and not what the (biased) parties want it to be.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  You can side load in other app stores in Android. iOS started out with side-loading, but then this was crushed by Apple's exercise of their absolute control of the operating system.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    iOS didn't start with side-loading. Do you have a source for this ?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      What mullingtover refers to.
    - judge2020 3y ago
      The first App Store was Cydia. Technically side-loading with how Apple failed to predict the dedication of breaking the (trivial, at the time) security to add more native apps to the home screen. https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/28/debian-style-installation-arrives-on-iphone/ https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/28/debian-style-installatio...
summerlight 3y ago
Relevant market is not a vague rhetorical definition as you such described. US FTC has not attempted to define a relevant market for digital apps, but EU clearly considers iOS alone as a relevant market and thus regulates it with DMA. To give you an idea of hypothetical regulation scenario: You want to move to an Android app. Sure you gotta need to change your phone as well. This is likely much more expensive than the app itself, thus it may make Android/iOS apps non-interchangeable. If FTC finds that this is expensive enough so most people won't make such move even if Apple decides to considerably increase the app store tax, then the App Store itself is a relevant market thus monopoly. We don't know the legal conclusion since FTC hasn't done such study (this is a very complex process that takes several years with huge uncertainties, this is why politicians prefer direct regulation via legislation), but many experts believe that Apple is not in a very safe position.
kmeisthax 3y ago
If I move off iOS I lose stuff I bought on iOS. Software licenses aren't portable across platforms, and there's lots of iOS software that doesn't even have an Android version (or vice versa). The software industry has fought tooth and nail to criminalize any attempt by users to resist this. Emulation software is legal, copying software you own to run it on different hardware is legal, but the digital locks designed to keep you from pirating apps make it illegal to migrate your apps even though it would otherwise be legal to do so. If you try to create a third mobile platform to compete, you will fail. We know this because of Microsoft and Amazon's failed attempts at making phone OSes. In Amazon's case, they actually used the same OS Google did, but Google refused to support it. And you can't legally port licenses over from Google Play to get Google's apps running on Fire OS. So the Fire Phone - a phone running Google's OS with Amazon's tweaks - could not use any Google apps. Anything on a Google service had to be used through the web browser. Windows Mobile was even worse: nobody wanted to support it natively. And again, you can't sell something that isn't an iPhone or Google-blessed Android that lets you buy App Store or Google Play apps and run them. This is the same situation for everything else, too. Amazon has a monopoly on books because Kindle and Audible books cannot be copied onto non-Amazon devices or reader apps. So nobody wants to buy books outside of Amazon's platform, because it'll split their collections. Nintendo spends extraordinary amounts of time and effort legally harassing anyone who publicly uses their games on non-Nintendo hardware. Same for Sony and Microsoft. To bring this back to your deli thing, imagine if you weren't allowed to have your deli's wine and other wine in the same apartment. There's chips in the wine bottles that will poison the wine if you do that, and there's a federal law prohibiting you from removing the chip, and prohibiting even discussing how to remove the chip. So you can switch wine stores, but you have to throw out all your wine that you already have. That is the current situation of software distribution as a consumer in 2023.
- chii 3y ago
  > If you try to create a third mobile platform to compete, you will fail. but apple wasn't the one preventing these from succeeding. they failed on their own. On the other hand, it is reasonable to conclude that Netscape didn't fail on their own, but that Microsoft _prevented_ netscape from gaining marketshare by preloading a competing browser; such a preloading can only have occurred with a monopoly on operating systems. Therefore, the monopoly abuse was to leverage its monopoly position in one market, to prevent competition a different market. So despite the fact that I also hate the appstore and walled gardens, apple _did not_ use their apple device dominance to _prevent_ android versions of an app from existing/competing. The complaint about walled gardens from people is that of lack of open access - not that of monopoly. I suspect that new laws needs to be introduced to break open walled gardens - i want to call these "interoperability" laws. It's in the interest of society for systems to be interoperable. This will not only concern apple devices, but things like EV charging networks, computer networks, and data interchange apis, and digital ownership of data. Imagine if by purchasing a CD or DVD, you are only allowed to play that disk on an authorized device! Now imagine instead of a physical disk, you buy a digital "disk" - a game, or music - but you're locked into the vendor's platform!

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Apple is a monopoly... on their own platform. Which by itself is not convincing, legally, at all. Sony has a monopoly on PlayStation games, Xbox has a monopoly on Xbox games, Nintendo has a monopoly on Nintendo games, Apple has a monopoly on iOS apps. What's to separate Apple from the game consoles? Legally, there is no such thing as a "general purpose computing device" despite the myths - they are legally in the exact same bucket. Just because a device can do more or less than another device (a game console versus a phone), or just because a device is subsidized by the apps (a game console, whereas iOS doesn't have that), doesn't change the status of it legally. Would you say that PlayStation is a monopoly? Probably not - you know they are competing with Xbox and Nintendo. Apple makes the same argument and legally it has held up - they are competing with Android and Windows and Amazon. You don't have to like the competition from Android or Amazon, but legally, there's competition and that's all that matters. At least for right now.

amelius 3y ago
It depends on how you categorize their products. In the space of privacy-friendly phones, Apple has a monopoly.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  "In the space of privacy-friendly phones, Apple has a monopoly." A. There's no legally recognized market for "privacy-friendly phones." B. "Privacy-friendly phones" is an ill-defined category, with "privacy" meaning different things to different people. Does a phone that blocks trackers qualify? Or does it have to protect me from rogue governments? There's no legal standard for what makes a device "privacy-friendly." Because of that, you are complaining that Apple has a monopoly in a market you just made up, which would be laughed out of court. You might as well claim Apple has a monopoly on phones with Lightning ports. C. There's always GrapheneOS, which is free for anyone who wants it. There's also CalyxOS. You might claim they don't serve your purpose, but the law doesn't care an ounce about your specific purpose. There's generally-recognized competition in the vague category. D. Having a monopoly is not illegal in the US. It's abusing your monopoly that's illegal. You would have to show Apple intentionally and specifically suppressed the development of alternative privacy-friendly phones by actively abusing their market power, which nobody is alleging.

judge2020 3y ago

This is the crux of the issue. Pretty much every opinion in the ruling has one opinion or another about how the case would've gone differently if the "market" defined by the district was broader. In this case, the market was "mobile gaming transactions". The district court analyzed anticompetitive effects in terms of increases in the cost of mobile gaming transactions—the court’s relevant market. But the court could have found greater increases in costs if its analysis concerned Epic’s markets, and this would change a properly conducted balancing analysis. In essence, any balancing done out of the context of a relevant market necessarily involves putting a thumb on the balancing scale.

gnicholas 3y ago

> monopoly on iOS What you're doing is assuming "the relevant market" is very narrow. In antitrust law, they say the case is won or lost on how broadly the relevant market is defined. Does Amazon compete against every brick and mortar store, or just other online merchants? The subsequent legal analysis looks very different depending on the answer to that question.

garbagecoder 3y ago
Right. If every plaintiff could just define a market a certain way, they would never lose a single anti-trust case. It isn't sustainable that way. Most people who dislike Apple have already found themselves a nice Android phone on it for less money with several app stores.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > every plaintiff could just define a market a certain way, they would never lose a single anti-trust case This goes both ways. My corner bodega has a monopoly over its intersection. In practice, we need legislation defining anti-competitive behavior for platforms and Thompsonian aggregators [1]. I haven't seen anyone propose a sensible, predictable framework. [1] https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    I like the chokepoint concept popularized by Cory Doctorow.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > the chokepoint concept popularized by Cory Doctorow Skimmed an interview Doctorow gave for Time [1]. I get the gripe. But I’m failing to find a unique, actionable definition. Better concise source? [1] https://time.com/6219423/chokepoint-capitalism-doctorow-giblin/ https://time.com/6219423/chokepoint-capitalism-doctorow-gibl...

garbagecoder 3y ago

"Monopoly on iOS" isn't a thing and no one should have ever acted like it was a thing. iOS doesn't have dominant market share, so we aren't even talking about smartphone apps. I have a monopoly on parking spots at my house, but that's not a relevant market. I'm for right to repair, I'm agains the 30% markup on the App Store, and I think Apple in general should make it easier for pro users to customize, but you the novel legal theories to consider someone with a smaller market share than a competitor in the relevant market (unless they are colluding with them in an oligopoly) is anarchy. You can't just say something is a market. It would never end the anti-trust litigation out there.

lapcat 3y ago
> iOS doesn't have dominant market share, so we aren't even talking about smartphone apps. iPhone has a 57% market share in the United States, the jurisdiction of the case.
- Spivak 3y ago
  And if you own 57% of the properties in Monopoly you still might lose. The standard, for better or worse, in the US for "wielding monopoly power" is consumer harm not market share. If you can't convince the courts customers are harmed by the status quo it'll be a uphill climb.
  - garbagecoder 3y ago
    If this case had any legs, someone would've made progress against Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft consoles in the past. They haven't, those are more locked down and much easier to demonstrate the price harm when games are $60 and marketed to children. You say "for better or worse" and I agree, but people don't want to hear that. They want to hear [company I don't like] should be punished and [company I like] shouldn't.
- garbagecoder 3y ago
  Cherrypicking one quarter to make your point is pretty desperate and still irrelevant. When the case started it was less than 50%. Now what? A textbook monopoly price antitrust case involves people who are virtually the only player, or a combination of almost all or all of the players. And the court found that they didn't do anything with whatever marketshare they had and this is obvious to people who were paying attention. What about consoles? They are even more locked down than phones, yet the Internet seems to have a lot less to say about that, even though it's been that way for decades. You can think Apple is a bad company. You can think they are too big. But you can't just wish the antitrust laws to be completely unworkable to punish them. That's the not the rule of law. That's the rule of "I don't like them."

nodamage 3y ago

The entire point of the court ruling is that it is not legally considered a monopoly, at least according to US antitrust law.

m00x 3y ago
According to the judge's interpretation of the US antitrust law*
- Spivak 3y ago
  That's true of literally every ruling of every case in history. If you're implying that they ruled incorrectly you're gonna have to provide an actual legal basis. A lot of court rulings are basically come down to, "I don't like the logic but it follows" and you just have to live with them.
- nodamage 3y ago
  Just like every other law? The legal definition of a monopoly has been refined over decades of case law, this ruling comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the specific requirements of that definition (which were clearly not met by Epic here).
  - m00x 3y ago
    Yes, hence why it can go to higher courts and have another judge interpret the case. The judge makes a decision on their interpretation of the case and the law. This is a very important distinction in decisions.
    - simondotau 3y ago
      Epic failed spectacularly. They couldn't prove a monopoly, and even if they could, they were not able to point to any instance where Apple abused a monopoly position to turn the screws on customers or developers. There's really no interpretation needed.

GeekyBear 3y ago

> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? The court did not decide that the relevant market was iOS only, as Epic wanted. > A threshold issue in any antitrust case is defining the “relevant market.” Here, Epic argued that the relevant market is Apple’s iOS system. Apple argued that the relevant market is the market for all digital video games, where it is one of many players. The court disagreed with both sides, and it instead defined the relevant market as “digital mobile gaming transactions.” Under this formulation, the court found that Apple has a 52–57% market share in the “digital mobile gaming transactions” market. But this was not enough for the court to conclude Apple has monopoly power. https://www.klgates.com/Court-Issues-Mixed-Ruling-in-Epic-v-Apple-Antitrust-Trial-10-6-2021 https://www.klgates.com/Court-Issues-Mixed-Ruling-in-Epic-v-... This article is about Epic losing their appeal of the lower court's rulings.

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giobox 3y ago
And this should be the first question almost anyone asks themselves in a discussion about an anti-trust/monopoly case - defining "the market" is the lynchpin upon which much of antitrust law works both in Europe and the United States. Also be wary of comments in this thread that don't weigh this most important element of the entire process well. All too often these discussions on anti-trust issues become meaningless on this site because everyone involved is using a personal definition for "the marketplace". Step one of any attempt to claim Apple holds a monopoly will require you to define exactly what the market is, in quite specific terms, and have the court agree. That didn't happen for Epic here.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  Yep. It really feels like a bunch of kids read up on ‘90s Microsoft, internalised a third-hand wildly simplified definition of ‘antitrust’, and used it to add a moral high-ground angle to what is essentially an iOS power user feature request. It’s often the first step in a whole lot of doublespeak. “This will set everybody free”, but at the same time, “this doesn’t present a security issue because nobody will use it”. To be clear, I think that the government should storm Apple Park with buns glazing and force them to do a more reasonable degree of rent-seeking. I’m not going to pretend that this is for any reason other than “I think that 30% is a dick move”. You don’t just get to pretend that Android doesn’t exist, or that the vast majority of ways that people communicate aren’t cross-platform, or that IOS has any material network effect whatsoever. So you really end up with two camps, one camp who always stop short of saying “iOS is just better in my eyes, and I want to be able to do more with my phone.” And the other camp is…let’s be honest…Android users. And the mere fact that there’s so many people in this camp I think directly contradicts any assertion that there’s a monopoly in the first place.

dylan604 3y ago

>How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? Maybe they don't mean competition between app stores, but between apps within the store itself? Look at how many apps are clones of other apps. If they didn't promote competition, they would shut down all of the clones. /s

shmerl 3y ago

> The App Store continues to promote competition This sounds like "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength".

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uncletaco 3y ago

You use IMO twice in your edit how are you not giving your opinion?

adamwk 3y ago
GP is saying their opinion is on the PR statement, not the courts ruling

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? (I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about) They’re talking about apps. Before the App Store (and the android store etc) finding, buying and installing apps was an incredibly painful experience that few developers or users bothered with. The app stores have promoted a massive leap in the number of apps available (perhaps too many) giving small app developers the ability to publicise and publish apps competing with bigger developers.

eddieroger 3y ago
It also gives a relatively (/relatively/) equal footing to all apps, short of editor's picks and sponsored results. If you want a podcast app, you will see Apple's own next to something made by a firm of 50 engineers, next to an option made by a 16 year old on a second-hand MacBook Pro. This is in contrast to trying to get on the shelves of Best Buy or CompUSA or Babbages, or anything analog before it.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  That relies on your definition of "relative" being relative to garbage. Apple runs Google-style App Store search ads[0] that get pushed above everything else, pre-installs (and sometimes forces) their clients on the user, and has access to entitlements that others do not. There are a lot of areas for scrutiny. This ruling feels like the can is being kicked further down the road, and with the European regulation coming in hot I expect there to be more debate here. Separating Apple's business practices from their personal policies will probably be where this discussion ends. [0] https://searchads.apple.com/ https://searchads.apple.com/

palijer 3y ago

We had an app update rejected because we mentioned an android version of our app in the release notes. What marketing says and what a company does don't need to align anymore sadly.

zer0zzz 3y ago

lol competition. Anyone ever notice how every single recommendation and app ranking editors choice list on apples AppStore seems to be weaponized against apples competitors?

chwa982 3y ago

Lobbying and pandering

realusername 3y ago

> How can the app store promote competition when it is a monopoly on iOS? (I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about) No need to go that far, the couple Google / Apple is a duopoly without any competition, regardless of their marketshare. So you can say that there's no competition on mobile marketplaces at all. (I'm ignoring irrelevant marketplaces such as Samsung store or Amazon app store which are a rounding error at best)

dustedcodes 3y ago

> The comments seem to imply I am giving my opinion on this case. I am not. I am commenting on the PR-speak given here. You acknowledge that this is PR speak, so what's so hard to understand that the PR line is to say that a market store promotes competition? > I suppose they could be talking between different apps, but that isn't what this case was about As you identified it yourself, it's PR speak, PR doesn't have to address the court case specifically, it merely promotes the App Store in its current form by simply stating a simple fact that sounds beneficial to Apple's case. Overall Apple is right, the App Store promotes competition and has driven a lot of innovation and expanded the opportunities of developers around the world. At the end of the day iOS could not allow third party apps AT ALL. iPhones could just be self contained devices with only the software on them which Apple has developed themselves. It would be like a smart fridge or toaster. You cannot load a different app into your smart fridge and nobody thinks this is anti-competitive. So given that not allowing any third party apps was the status quo in the early days of iPhones, the fact that Apple opened up and created a market place where developers can promote and advertise their own apps to be purchased and loaded onto people's iPhones is a HUGE STEP towards promoting competition, innovation and opportunity.

015a 3y ago

Their argument would be: the App Store has a home page and search results, both of which do have an advertising model, and competitors to Apple applications appear in both these locations regularly. They promote competition by allowing competition into the app store. Yes, it is the absolute bare minimum, but you also have to remember that the standards for anti-trust enforcement in the united states are extremely low.

drw85 3y ago

From a customers perspective, does the multiple stores approach on Android benefit me in any way? I now get bombarded with conflicting updates for apps from multiple stores. They all try to get in each others way and it's much harder to figure out what to install and from where. I greatly prefer the Apple app store, where i can be reasonably sure that i'm not downloading a bunch of malware every time i look for an app. The absolute king of this mess is the windows store. There is basically 50 malwares for every possible keyword in that absolute garbage patch of a store.