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At that point consumers would be free to make a choice to switch away from Apple if they value their privacy enough. The problem right now is that Apple is 'abu
by onion2k 1y ago
At that point consumers would be free to make a choice to switch away from Apple if they value their privacy enough. The problem right now is that Apple is 'abusing' the fact that privacy-aware consumers are drawn to their platform to charge onerous fees to app developers. They're leveraging their (de facto) monopoly on high-end mobile privacy-aware devices to restrict competition in mobile app fee charging. It's that business practice that's wrong - having a monopoly is fine so long as you don't start using your monopoly position to make money from people who are your customers for some other business.
Microsoft fell foul of this in the early 2000s. It wasn't their monopoly on desktop PC OSs that lost them an anti-trust case. It was the fact they used their monopoly on Windows to push users into adopting IE. They abused their monopoly position. That's the problem.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>At that point consumers would be free to make a choice to switch away from Apple if they value their privacy enough. Consumers who spent hundreds of dollars in Appstore purchases and have 10+ years of photos, movies and data tied to Apple won't just suddenly leave all that and move to Android and start their digital life from scratch. And the young consumers just starting their digital lives, are jumping in the ecosystem their friends and family already use (iMessage lock-in). It's basically not even your choice at that point, it's more that you're forced to.
- thfuran 1y agoAnd switching to Android, which is only technically not the only alternative, doesn't exactly help privacy anyways.
- parineum 1y agoThe alternative is not having a smart phone.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoNo, the world is not either smartphone or no-smarthone, it's not binary. The correct alternative is not having anti consumer vendor lock-in practices in smartphones. We had PWA even before we had locked in app-stores but then Apple saw the dollar signs of locking people and app devs in their graded and gave up on PWA and doubled down on draconian lock-in.
- parineum 1y ago> They're leveraging their (de facto) monopoly If it's necessary to put a qualifier on the word "monopoly", it's a great indication that it's not a monopoly.
- dcow 1y agoI don’t think the qualifier was necessary. I think it was used to describe the obvious nature of anyone owning the sole software distribution means on their platform, it gives them a de facto monopoly on that means as opposed to a natural? monopoly where they just got so big they fell into it.
- bigyabai 1y agoApple unquestionably monopolizes the App Store. Whether or not you consider it a substantial monopoly is it's own thing, but the App Store itself is segregated from competition.
- BlueTemplar 1y agoThis word is not used in the real world anyway. And depending on the jurisdiction, there often isn't even a minimum 50% market share to qualify.