I really don’t understand why it’s taking so long to recognise Apple/Google as a monopoly.
I develop internal apps for small companies. Apple still forces each update - to an unlisted app - to go through a review process.
Google on the other hand have just told me they need to collect my address, phone number, and ID documents next year or they will delete my developer account.
I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, wait weeks for reviews, and have my personal data collected & sold, because I distribute private software to people who use one of the two vendors that make up 99.99% of the market.
“Ohh it’s not a monopoly because your clients could just carry around a lenovo running linux instead of a mobile phone”. How is this argument still passing the bar?
> “Ohh it’s not a monopoly because your clients could just carry around a lenovo running linux instead of a mobile phone”. How is this argument still passing the bar?
This explains that they are a duopoly, not a monopoly. However I do agree they are both a monopoly:
You're making a 10$ app targeting Californian 10-20 yos. They have 95% Apple devices (I don't know, I'm completely spitballing, but you get the idea.). You develop the Apple app, everything is going good, you have 1M users, Apple decides to cut you off on a whim (not saying they are doing it, but they are allowed to since they are legally not a monopoly). What does this "free competition between Apple and Android" is going to do to you? Re-target your game to SWE who are more likely to have Androids?
The Unity ruling seem to be clear to me that that the US law doesn't consider it a monopoly, and I acknowledge that. I can understand where this comes from. But it feels like laws need to be updated to take this new kind of situation (a local per-person monopoly impacting multiple distinct markets) into consideration.
> What does this "free competition between Apple and Android" is going to do to you? Re-target your game to SWE who are more likely to have Androids?
It's worse than that. Suppose you have an app where neither of the platforms has a disproportionate share of the users -- they're evenly split. Now one of the platforms makes trouble for you. They want to ban you, or impose unreasonable restrictions, or charge high fees. Can you switch to the other one? Pit them against each other?
No, because the other one can't reach those users. It's not like having a Walmart and a Target across the street from each other, where any buyer can trivially switch to the other store if either of them stops carrying the seller's goods. It's like having a Walmart in Florida and a Target in California and if Target kicks you out, there is no other way to reach your customers in California because they're not going to move to Florida just to shop at Walmart.
Calling this "not a monopoly" because Walmart and Target are both operating in the United States is rather missing the issue.
When movie studios in the US were barred from owning theatres they had 17% of the theatres and 45% of the revenue. Among all the big studios at the time, Paramount, MGM, Fox, WB, RKO. Apple and Google have 99% of all smartphones and 99% of revenue.
It's pretty clear that they have an oversized influence and control over mobile app distribution too...
So for example, if you have a dominant position for phone operating systems, or a certain type of phone operating systems, and you want to exclude others from the market for app stores for those phones?
Words have meanings. It's a monopoly if a single entity has complete (or almost-complete) control of a market.
"Apple/Google" isn't a single entity, neither has anything close to complete control of the US mobile-device market, and they do seem to actively be opposed to each other in many areas rather than being some sort of cartel.
I think my use of the word “monopoly” is causing people to miss the forest for the trees.
My clients have employees who essentially have two ecosystem options when buying a smartphone - Apple or Google.
I, as a developer, then have to bend to the will of both of these corporations which, no matter how they compete on other things, are just as bad as each other when it comes to developer treatment.
Monopoly, duopoly, whatever - it’s crazy. Why am I uploading my fucking ID to Google, giving them my phone number, which they say “they may contact periodically to ensure the account is still active”, because I distribute private software to a private organisation?
monopoly | məˈnɒpəli |
noun (plural monopolies)
1 the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service: the state's monopoly of radio and television broadcasting.
• a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service: passenger services were largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies | France's electricity monopoly, EDF.
In case it's not clear from the definition, notice the first example's deliberate pluralisation; "largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies".
Your definition is both wrong, and I suspect made in bad faith anyway.
Depends how you view them. If you consider them to be each rather separate ecosystems with limited exchange between them, they could perhaps be two monopolies?
We need to have a shared definition of rent seeking. Rent Seeking necessitates no economic value creation. I struggle to objectively see Apple's AppStore as a merchant of record deriving no economic value. Same for their subscription management, inclusive of refunds, fraud detection, payment retries. Same for their IDE and development pipelines. CloudKit with automatic syncing and object management just built in via CoreData // SwiftData. Oh and discoverability via a single source of truth for Apps. And numerous more...
I would encourage anyone to try doing a fully 1:1 app in both web and native iOS for good measure to judge for themselves. Perhaps you could say 30% is a 'premium'; however after 1 year it drops down to 15%... objectively, I struggle to characterize the dev ecosystem as 'rent-seeking'
Maybe the better question is to ask whether the current oligopoly(?, or in the case of the Apple app store perhaps a monopoly?) is moving towards increased or decreased consumer surplus.
Apple acts as if the app store is the driving factor behind users installing apps when in many cases it's not. In many cases users install apps because of the developer's own marketing efforts while Apple did nothing at all to deserve to be an intermediary in this relationship. Most iOS developers I know don't see the app store as the godsend that Apple wants it to appear. On the contrary, they see it as an asinine obstacle they have to clear to reach their users.
Mac app store has to compete with developers doing their own app distribution and we can see pretty clearly that its adoption is kinda meh.
For one, it would return us to the status-quo where the user decides what to install on the hardware they own. That seems pretty important to me, even if you hate Europe or Apple.
Most likely they will attack the EU's definition of the relevant market as being "iOS App Store" and claim they only have a sliver of the larger "Mobile app store" market, even though iOS and Android apps are not substitutes for one another. How you define the market is usually the crux of antitrust battles.
The European legal system has not been captured like the US was by Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork) and the Chicago School (dogma: monopolies are a logical impossibility because markets are infallible). Thus this will likely only stall for a few months, I'm sure Apple knows that, but it's a few more months of those juicy App Store margins that are so essential to Apple's financials under the "Services" rubric.
IMHO Apple will thank EU for this because Digital Markets Act will save Apple from itself.
I'm a huge Apple fanboy and I'm happy with the walled garden HOWEVER Apple begun engaging in rent seeking and missing out on innovation and I really, really want Apple to succeed because they are the tech company that cares about user experience over false metrics like megapixels and screen to body ratio.
Apple's rent seeking on NFC already causes me bad user experience because when I'm not somewhere where Apple Pay is supported, I miss out on banking apps that support NFC.
Also, governments(UK, EU, USA - all of them) are eager to turn the tech companies into a police and there's a war in Europe and political turmoil all over the world where you and hundreds of millions are at risk of falling at the wrong side of the aggressive dominant political movements.
I'm sure Tim Cook and anybody at Apple wouldn't want to be the tech suppliers who helped governments to enforce policies that some time in the future might be viewed just as badly as the German policies around 1940s.
At this very moment, Apple might believe that they are on the right side of the history but what happens if Trump wins in a year? What happens if the far right in EU begins dominating the politics? They are angry and they want vengeance, they go after people all the time. Maybe Apple was able to say F.U. to the UK and said it will not implement spying into its iMessage&Facetime services and leave UK if they have to but can they do the same in USA for example? Can Apple say no to Trump admin and leave the US markets if they decide to ban encryption so they can hunt down the "enemies of the state" and "dry the swamp".
Very dangerous times, no company should be in position to become the police.
I understand where you come from, but I believe it is way too late for that.
I used to be an Apple "fanboy", way more moderate than the term suggests but up until 2016-2017 I thought their approach made more sense and was seeking the best compromise possible.
But now they are too far gone in the money making, empire building side. I believe the culture that built the Apple we loved is completely dead now and all the people that were the keepers of that have either moved out themselves or got pushed out by management to make way for the new culture of ultra greed rent seeking.
I think it is naive to believe we can go back to what Apple was. It is a shell of itself and even the hardware products are somewhat nice but feel very bland and uninspired for the price (they also have a lot of performance/durability problems because of cost cutting, margin chasing). And this time there is not Steve Jobs to come back.
In my opinion it is better to see the objective truth, cut your losses and move on to another cheaper and more open platform. There is not much to expect from Apple, it's all downhill from here...
Totally expected nonsense from current greedy psychopathic Apple.
They are absolutely gatekeepers and have an absolutely unreasonable amount of control on devices they are not supposed to own anymore because people bought them.
I think they also should look into their behavior of forcing update, in order to make devices obsolete earlier by making them run slower even though they worked completely fine for everything that was required of them.
I thought it was conspiracy theories but right now, just after the annual release and just after a mysterious new update with little information on what it is supposed to fix; my iPhone 12 Mini is starting to seriously lag both in Apple apps and 3rd party apps.
Thats a very disturbing coincidence, especially since it's not the first time it has happened.
By the way I am still on "old" iOS 16.7.2 because I don't trust Apple release anymore. In fact, if I could, I would go back to the iOS the iPhone was sold with; but you can't because Apple is selling their update bullshit narrative in their marketing.
From where I sit there are a lot more cons than pros for the average user...
Challenging the law makes Apple look like they know better which laws should be obeyed.like they consider themselves as ultimate authority on any question..
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I develop internal apps for small companies. Apple still forces each update - to an unlisted app - to go through a review process.
Google on the other hand have just told me they need to collect my address, phone number, and ID documents next year or they will delete my developer account.
I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, wait weeks for reviews, and have my personal data collected & sold, because I distribute private software to people who use one of the two vendors that make up 99.99% of the market.
“Ohh it’s not a monopoly because your clients could just carry around a lenovo running linux instead of a mobile phone”. How is this argument still passing the bar?
This explains that they are a duopoly, not a monopoly. However I do agree they are both a monopoly:
You're making a 10$ app targeting Californian 10-20 yos. They have 95% Apple devices (I don't know, I'm completely spitballing, but you get the idea.). You develop the Apple app, everything is going good, you have 1M users, Apple decides to cut you off on a whim (not saying they are doing it, but they are allowed to since they are legally not a monopoly). What does this "free competition between Apple and Android" is going to do to you? Re-target your game to SWE who are more likely to have Androids?
The Unity ruling seem to be clear to me that that the US law doesn't consider it a monopoly, and I acknowledge that. I can understand where this comes from. But it feels like laws need to be updated to take this new kind of situation (a local per-person monopoly impacting multiple distinct markets) into consideration.
It's worse than that. Suppose you have an app where neither of the platforms has a disproportionate share of the users -- they're evenly split. Now one of the platforms makes trouble for you. They want to ban you, or impose unreasonable restrictions, or charge high fees. Can you switch to the other one? Pit them against each other?
No, because the other one can't reach those users. It's not like having a Walmart and a Target across the street from each other, where any buyer can trivially switch to the other store if either of them stops carrying the seller's goods. It's like having a Walmart in Florida and a Target in California and if Target kicks you out, there is no other way to reach your customers in California because they're not going to move to Florida just to shop at Walmart.
Calling this "not a monopoly" because Walmart and Target are both operating in the United States is rather missing the issue.
It's pretty clear that they have an oversized influence and control over mobile app distribution too...
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Monopolies, in and of themselves, are not illegal in the US.
Leveraging monopoly position to gain unfair advantage in markets outside the monopoly is illegal.
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The answer is corruption. I believe it’s plain obvious by now.
"Apple/Google" isn't a single entity, neither has anything close to complete control of the US mobile-device market, and they do seem to actively be opposed to each other in many areas rather than being some sort of cartel.
My clients have employees who essentially have two ecosystem options when buying a smartphone - Apple or Google.
I, as a developer, then have to bend to the will of both of these corporations which, no matter how they compete on other things, are just as bad as each other when it comes to developer treatment.
Monopoly, duopoly, whatever - it’s crazy. Why am I uploading my fucking ID to Google, giving them my phone number, which they say “they may contact periodically to ensure the account is still active”, because I distribute private software to a private organisation?
monopoly | məˈnɒpəli | noun (plural monopolies) 1 the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service: the state's monopoly of radio and television broadcasting. • a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service: passenger services were largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies | France's electricity monopoly, EDF.
In case it's not clear from the definition, notice the first example's deliberate pluralisation; "largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies".
Your definition is both wrong, and I suspect made in bad faith anyway.
Apple/Google are a duopoly, and at least in the US, being a duopoly is legally fine so long as you don't collude on pricing.
I would encourage anyone to try doing a fully 1:1 app in both web and native iOS for good measure to judge for themselves. Perhaps you could say 30% is a 'premium'; however after 1 year it drops down to 15%... objectively, I struggle to characterize the dev ecosystem as 'rent-seeking'
Mac app store has to compete with developers doing their own app distribution and we can see pretty clearly that its adoption is kinda meh.
The European legal system has not been captured like the US was by Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork) and the Chicago School (dogma: monopolies are a logical impossibility because markets are infallible). Thus this will likely only stall for a few months, I'm sure Apple knows that, but it's a few more months of those juicy App Store margins that are so essential to Apple's financials under the "Services" rubric.
I'm a huge Apple fanboy and I'm happy with the walled garden HOWEVER Apple begun engaging in rent seeking and missing out on innovation and I really, really want Apple to succeed because they are the tech company that cares about user experience over false metrics like megapixels and screen to body ratio.
Apple's rent seeking on NFC already causes me bad user experience because when I'm not somewhere where Apple Pay is supported, I miss out on banking apps that support NFC.
Also, governments(UK, EU, USA - all of them) are eager to turn the tech companies into a police and there's a war in Europe and political turmoil all over the world where you and hundreds of millions are at risk of falling at the wrong side of the aggressive dominant political movements.
I'm sure Tim Cook and anybody at Apple wouldn't want to be the tech suppliers who helped governments to enforce policies that some time in the future might be viewed just as badly as the German policies around 1940s. At this very moment, Apple might believe that they are on the right side of the history but what happens if Trump wins in a year? What happens if the far right in EU begins dominating the politics? They are angry and they want vengeance, they go after people all the time. Maybe Apple was able to say F.U. to the UK and said it will not implement spying into its iMessage&Facetime services and leave UK if they have to but can they do the same in USA for example? Can Apple say no to Trump admin and leave the US markets if they decide to ban encryption so they can hunt down the "enemies of the state" and "dry the swamp".
Very dangerous times, no company should be in position to become the police.
But now they are too far gone in the money making, empire building side. I believe the culture that built the Apple we loved is completely dead now and all the people that were the keepers of that have either moved out themselves or got pushed out by management to make way for the new culture of ultra greed rent seeking.
I think it is naive to believe we can go back to what Apple was. It is a shell of itself and even the hardware products are somewhat nice but feel very bland and uninspired for the price (they also have a lot of performance/durability problems because of cost cutting, margin chasing). And this time there is not Steve Jobs to come back.
In my opinion it is better to see the objective truth, cut your losses and move on to another cheaper and more open platform. There is not much to expect from Apple, it's all downhill from here...
They are absolutely gatekeepers and have an absolutely unreasonable amount of control on devices they are not supposed to own anymore because people bought them.
I think they also should look into their behavior of forcing update, in order to make devices obsolete earlier by making them run slower even though they worked completely fine for everything that was required of them. I thought it was conspiracy theories but right now, just after the annual release and just after a mysterious new update with little information on what it is supposed to fix; my iPhone 12 Mini is starting to seriously lag both in Apple apps and 3rd party apps. Thats a very disturbing coincidence, especially since it's not the first time it has happened. By the way I am still on "old" iOS 16.7.2 because I don't trust Apple release anymore. In fact, if I could, I would go back to the iOS the iPhone was sold with; but you can't because Apple is selling their update bullshit narrative in their marketing. From where I sit there are a lot more cons than pros for the average user...
Dead Comment