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> Apple does not have a monopoly in that market Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets, b

> Apple does not have a monopoly in that market Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets, both monopolized by definition of private control over basic aspects like pricing and content, including mandating a private tax rate?

rurp 3y ago
Because the two giant companies that own those markets like it this way, and they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.
- pipes 3y ago
  Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    It's both. They lobbied to keep it that way. I'm a little glad they did.
  - hobs 3y ago
    Because it actively harms the users of the market, and we'd control the regulation in our favor if big companies didn't brainwash everyone.
  - legitster 3y ago
    It's not even clear that breaking up the app stores would be good for consumers or developers. Having to load an app onto 15 different app stores to capture the market sounds like hell. The only ones who would really benefit are other large corporations like Epic.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      And Epic only cares because they want to run their own private, exclusive App Store.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mvc 3y ago
      As a mere consumer, I would prefer it if "capturing" was difficult. Society should not be optimized for those who want to "capture" entire markets.
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > Or because those two companies created those platform This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws. > I don't see why they owe it to other companies That owe it to the countries that they are based in to follow the law, or move their entire company else where, if that's what they choose.
    - semiquaver 3y ago
      > This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws. No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law. We are in a thread discussing a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9. “This is completely irrelevant if [this decidedly false fact]” is not really a useful statement. Wishcasting that courts will misinterpret the law is not the way forward, the way forward is new laws.
      - stale2002 3y ago
        > No legal precedent supports Gotcha. Unrelated to my point though. My point was that someone saying "well it's their platform, they can do what they want!" Is making a bad argument. If someone wants to make a good argument, instead of a bad one, then you would have to start talking about what a monopoly is. But whoever built the platform is simply an argument that is unrelated. > is not really a useful statement. It absolutely is useful, because it focuses on the question that matters. No matter if you think that Apple is a monopoly or not, of which there are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides, the fact that Apple built it just doesn't matter. Talk about the things that matter, not unrelated points. > a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9. If you meant to imply that this is a final verdict on if Apple is a monopoly or not, then I would recommend that you re-read the original ruling of the California judge. The California judge was very clear that the verdict only shows that Epic failed in their arguments, not that Apple is decidedly not a monopoly.
        semiquaver 3y ago
        You’re mistaken. The district court did in fact find that Apple does not possess monopoly power in any relevant market. Here is the ruling from the 9th Circuit: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/21-16506.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2... Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement. Its rulings on law are binding throughout the 9th circuit. While “possession of monopoly power is a fact question”, this denial is likely to be the final say for quite some time on questions of whether Apple possesses monopoly power in markets related to app stores, which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android. Epic attempted to argue that Apple has monopoly power in “iOS games” which was rejected since you can’t just arbitrarily narrow your market definition until you find a monopoly.
  - JeffSnazz 3y ago
    > Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices. It's up to us to make them give us better tools for us. This isn't a natural thing that just happens. I don't give a damn which company succeeds in the end so long as the consumer is fairly represented.
- grecy 3y ago
  > they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position. They paid lawmakers to keep the laws the way they want them to be. Just so we're clear, if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > They paid lawmakers...if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery No, they did not and no we would not. If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
    - hex4def6 3y ago
      >If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open. https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=apple&sort=A&type=donors https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=apple&sort=A... $140,000 to a John Harris Whitmire. Apparently he's "an American attorney and politician who is the 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas" according to Wikipedia.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        That's a campaign donation. (Mayors in mayor-council governments aren't technically lawmakers, though Houston has a strong enough mayor that it's semantic at best.) You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally. I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
        lmm 3y ago
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I guess you mean Apple and Nintendo right? I'm not sure if Switch is really so comparable to an iPhone though.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    Apple and Google
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets Are you talking about the App Stores?
- prophesi 3y ago
  App Store and Play Store.
judge2020 3y ago
the entire iPhone experience is the product. While technically we know that other app stores can and do work on it (Cydia, Trollstore, etc), from a US legal sense there's no separation between the App Store and the iPhone being distinct things.
- lxgr 3y ago
  That's the crux of the problem: Current antitrust laws don't really capture it. The EU realized that and just passed a huge new law/regulatory framework to address it, and presumably the US will be closely watching this space.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > the entire iPhone experience is the product. It seems like the "iPhone experience" is paying a ton more than you should have to, including the 30% price hike for in-app purchases. Since Apple is already a status symbol brand that might not hurt their image much, but at least this case helped to raise awareness about what people are buying into or have already signed up for with the iphone.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    I can guarantee you no apps will drop their prices 30%. When Epic pulled their stunt[0], 1000 v-bucks that normally costed $10 were only discounted to $8. They still pocketed $1, maybe ~=$0.68 after CC processing fees. 0: https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-epic-direct-payment-on-mobile https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-epic-direct-payment...
    - callalex 3y ago
      Of course prices won’t drop because price is based on what people are willing to pay. However the actual creator will have up to 30% more funding instead of a rent seeker, which means the creator will have more margin to increase quality, which benefits the consumer.
willseth 3y ago
Those two distinct major private markets are inside platforms that compete with each other, so it's not clear what a monopoly means in that case. That's what everyone is trying to figure out. A judge can't simply mandate a private tax rate and probably wouldn't want to anyway. Antitrust judgments typically try to remedy root causes limiting competition so the market can work out the rest, rather than try to guess some arbitrary "fair" rate that wouldn't be constant anyway.
- lxgr 3y ago
  The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains. The duopoly of mobile app stores would not be nearly as problematic if it wasn’t also tied to a duopoly in phone OS vendors, one of which also tied to a monopoly in phone vendors, which is tied to a monopoly (quasi-monopoly? not sure what to call iMessage in the US) in instant messaging platforms etc.
  - willseth 3y ago
    That's a pretty broad root cause. The problem is coming up with a remedy that can't be worked around or doesn't distort the market in other ways. It will be interesting to see what happens in Europe if/when they force Apple to allow side-loading apps.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      The EU redress strikes at the core of the issue -- if Apple and Google are prohibited from monopolizing app stores and/or payment processing on their respective platforms (including via incentives, tying products to exclusive use, etc.), then their mobile OS/hardware monopolies loose a lot of their power.
      - willseth 3y ago
        The bigger question to me is to what degree will the platform owners be restricted from monetizing apps on the platform. Requiring apps to be installable at no cost to the developer makes a big assumption that platform fees are 100% rent. Some of the fee surely is, but if enough people are able to circumvent fees, it seems likely to impact the dynamics of the platform, e.g. If supporting 3rd party apps become less profitable, why wouldn't Apple and Google shift focus/investments to first-part apps and features and allow public APIs to languish?
johnnyanmac 3y ago
The important disctintion is that monopoly (the formal definition) is subtly different from monopoly (the legal definition). I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly, but legally speaking they haven't done much to pressure nor push out competitors. That said, the arguable App Store monopoly (legal) is being challenged in the EU and it sounds like Apple is getting ready to relinquish a bit of that stronghold (apparently by giving the EU a different model of software or something. Still have yet to read the rumors in detail).
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  >I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly If Apple has monopoly here then Best Buy has a monopoly too. Everything you buy in Best Buy is priced according to Best Buy. You can't walk into a Best Buy and say "Oh, I already paid for it on Sony's website, so I'm just here to pick up the TV".
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    My above comment was talking about IOS and the mobile market overall (of which it has some half of market, give or take a percentage), not the App Store. Even then, if we focus on stores: Google with multiple stores still does have a play store monopoly (formal, arguably legal given current lawsuits) on Android OS. And on top of that, the EU rulings with Apple mean your metaphor may not be as farfetched as you make it seem. These aren't based on my opinions so much the fact that both OS are under legal fire. So I wouldn't dismiss this so easily.
shadowgovt 3y ago
For the same reason we act like there's such a thing as a "Right to bear arms" or a "common-law right to joint ownership of property with your spouse." The law is arbitrary and highly path-dependent. But in the absence of the law, there's no "market" period, not as a government-protected legal construct. Without the law, Apple could just tell Epic to pound sand because they have the right-of-might to rotate encryption keys, release future versions of the iPhone that scan for Epic software using hardware-based solutions and brick the phone if they're detected, and drop OS updates that retroactively delete Epic games from user phones if they wanted. I'm glad for the law that prevents that, even if it's the same framework that makes me act like there's a "mobile game market."

rurp 3y ago

Because the two giant companies that own those markets like it this way, and they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.

pipes 3y ago
Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  It's both. They lobbied to keep it that way. I'm a little glad they did.
- hobs 3y ago
  Because it actively harms the users of the market, and we'd control the regulation in our favor if big companies didn't brainwash everyone.
- legitster 3y ago
  It's not even clear that breaking up the app stores would be good for consumers or developers. Having to load an app onto 15 different app stores to capture the market sounds like hell. The only ones who would really benefit are other large corporations like Epic.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    And Epic only cares because they want to run their own private, exclusive App Store.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mvc 3y ago
    As a mere consumer, I would prefer it if "capturing" was difficult. Society should not be optimized for those who want to "capture" entire markets.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > Or because those two companies created those platform This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws. > I don't see why they owe it to other companies That owe it to the countries that they are based in to follow the law, or move their entire company else where, if that's what they choose.
  - semiquaver 3y ago
    > This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws. No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law. We are in a thread discussing a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9. “This is completely irrelevant if [this decidedly false fact]” is not really a useful statement. Wishcasting that courts will misinterpret the law is not the way forward, the way forward is new laws.
    - stale2002 3y ago
      > No legal precedent supports Gotcha. Unrelated to my point though. My point was that someone saying "well it's their platform, they can do what they want!" Is making a bad argument. If someone wants to make a good argument, instead of a bad one, then you would have to start talking about what a monopoly is. But whoever built the platform is simply an argument that is unrelated. > is not really a useful statement. It absolutely is useful, because it focuses on the question that matters. No matter if you think that Apple is a monopoly or not, of which there are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides, the fact that Apple built it just doesn't matter. Talk about the things that matter, not unrelated points. > a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9. If you meant to imply that this is a final verdict on if Apple is a monopoly or not, then I would recommend that you re-read the original ruling of the California judge. The California judge was very clear that the verdict only shows that Epic failed in their arguments, not that Apple is decidedly not a monopoly.
      - semiquaver 3y ago
        You’re mistaken. The district court did in fact find that Apple does not possess monopoly power in any relevant market. Here is the ruling from the 9th Circuit: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/21-16506.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2... Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement. Its rulings on law are binding throughout the 9th circuit. While “possession of monopoly power is a fact question”, this denial is likely to be the final say for quite some time on questions of whether Apple possesses monopoly power in markets related to app stores, which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android. Epic attempted to argue that Apple has monopoly power in “iOS games” which was rejected since you can’t just arbitrarily narrow your market definition until you find a monopoly.
- JeffSnazz 3y ago
  > Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices. It's up to us to make them give us better tools for us. This isn't a natural thing that just happens. I don't give a damn which company succeeds in the end so long as the consumer is fairly represented.
grecy 3y ago
> they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position. They paid lawmakers to keep the laws the way they want them to be. Just so we're clear, if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > They paid lawmakers...if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery No, they did not and no we would not. If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
  - hex4def6 3y ago
    >If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open. https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=apple&sort=A&type=donors https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=apple&sort=A... $140,000 to a John Harris Whitmire. Apparently he's "an American attorney and politician who is the 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas" according to Wikipedia.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      That's a campaign donation. (Mayors in mayor-council governments aren't technically lawmakers, though Houston has a strong enough mayor that it's semantic at best.) You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally. I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
      - lmm 3y ago
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
I guess you mean Apple and Nintendo right? I'm not sure if Switch is really so comparable to an iPhone though.
- bmitc 3y ago
  Apple and Google

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets Are you talking about the App Stores?

prophesi 3y ago
App Store and Play Store.

judge2020 3y ago

the entire iPhone experience is the product. While technically we know that other app stores can and do work on it (Cydia, Trollstore, etc), from a US legal sense there's no separation between the App Store and the iPhone being distinct things.

lxgr 3y ago
That's the crux of the problem: Current antitrust laws don't really capture it. The EU realized that and just passed a huge new law/regulatory framework to address it, and presumably the US will be closely watching this space.
autoexec 3y ago
> the entire iPhone experience is the product. It seems like the "iPhone experience" is paying a ton more than you should have to, including the 30% price hike for in-app purchases. Since Apple is already a status symbol brand that might not hurt their image much, but at least this case helped to raise awareness about what people are buying into or have already signed up for with the iphone.
- judge2020 3y ago
  I can guarantee you no apps will drop their prices 30%. When Epic pulled their stunt[0], 1000 v-bucks that normally costed $10 were only discounted to $8. They still pocketed $1, maybe ~=$0.68 after CC processing fees. 0: https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-epic-direct-payment-on-mobile https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-epic-direct-payment...
  - callalex 3y ago
    Of course prices won’t drop because price is based on what people are willing to pay. However the actual creator will have up to 30% more funding instead of a rent seeker, which means the creator will have more margin to increase quality, which benefits the consumer.

willseth 3y ago

Those two distinct major private markets are inside platforms that compete with each other, so it's not clear what a monopoly means in that case. That's what everyone is trying to figure out. A judge can't simply mandate a private tax rate and probably wouldn't want to anyway. Antitrust judgments typically try to remedy root causes limiting competition so the market can work out the rest, rather than try to guess some arbitrary "fair" rate that wouldn't be constant anyway.

lxgr 3y ago
The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains. The duopoly of mobile app stores would not be nearly as problematic if it wasn’t also tied to a duopoly in phone OS vendors, one of which also tied to a monopoly in phone vendors, which is tied to a monopoly (quasi-monopoly? not sure what to call iMessage in the US) in instant messaging platforms etc.
- willseth 3y ago
  That's a pretty broad root cause. The problem is coming up with a remedy that can't be worked around or doesn't distort the market in other ways. It will be interesting to see what happens in Europe if/when they force Apple to allow side-loading apps.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    The EU redress strikes at the core of the issue -- if Apple and Google are prohibited from monopolizing app stores and/or payment processing on their respective platforms (including via incentives, tying products to exclusive use, etc.), then their mobile OS/hardware monopolies loose a lot of their power.
    - willseth 3y ago
      The bigger question to me is to what degree will the platform owners be restricted from monetizing apps on the platform. Requiring apps to be installable at no cost to the developer makes a big assumption that platform fees are 100% rent. Some of the fee surely is, but if enough people are able to circumvent fees, it seems likely to impact the dynamics of the platform, e.g. If supporting 3rd party apps become less profitable, why wouldn't Apple and Google shift focus/investments to first-part apps and features and allow public APIs to languish?

johnnyanmac 3y ago

The important disctintion is that monopoly (the formal definition) is subtly different from monopoly (the legal definition). I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly, but legally speaking they haven't done much to pressure nor push out competitors. That said, the arguable App Store monopoly (legal) is being challenged in the EU and it sounds like Apple is getting ready to relinquish a bit of that stronghold (apparently by giving the EU a different model of software or something. Still have yet to read the rumors in detail).

lowbloodsugar 3y ago
>I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly If Apple has monopoly here then Best Buy has a monopoly too. Everything you buy in Best Buy is priced according to Best Buy. You can't walk into a Best Buy and say "Oh, I already paid for it on Sony's website, so I'm just here to pick up the TV".
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  My above comment was talking about IOS and the mobile market overall (of which it has some half of market, give or take a percentage), not the App Store. Even then, if we focus on stores: Google with multiple stores still does have a play store monopoly (formal, arguably legal given current lawsuits) on Android OS. And on top of that, the EU rulings with Apple mean your metaphor may not be as farfetched as you make it seem. These aren't based on my opinions so much the fact that both OS are under legal fire. So I wouldn't dismiss this so easily.

shadowgovt 3y ago

For the same reason we act like there's such a thing as a "Right to bear arms" or a "common-law right to joint ownership of property with your spouse." The law is arbitrary and highly path-dependent. But in the absence of the law, there's no "market" period, not as a government-protected legal construct. Without the law, Apple could just tell Epic to pound sand because they have the right-of-might to rotate encryption keys, release future versions of the iPhone that scan for Epic software using hardware-based solutions and brick the phone if they're detected, and drop OS updates that retroactively delete Epic games from user phones if they wanted. I'm glad for the law that prevents that, even if it's the same framework that makes me act like there's a "mobile game market."