The EU, for example, aims its anti-competitive regulation towards firms who have a "dominant market position" rather than a "monopoly".
People are raising concerns over Apple buying a small company and shutting down its offerings to any platform that isn't Apple's.
Apple has a pattern of purchasing companies that already offer products on other platforms and immediately shutting all non-iOS products down.
Obviously, they're free to run their business however they want, but it's also understandable that fans of those products might be upset that their app (or APIs that power other apps they enjoy) are no longer available simply because Apple did "their usual thing". Many companies (including Apple in rare cases) maintain or even develop codebases for applications across more than one platform.
There's nothing wrong with Apple buying companies to shut them down. It just sucks for the end-users who no longer get to use those companies' products for the sole reason of "they got bought by Apple".
A monopoly exists when there is a single seller of a commodity. Copyrights and patents are government-granted monopolies.
A broader definition is that a monopolist is a provider that has pricing power - the ability to set prices.
Apple has a monopoly on the channel to deliver iOS apps. Anyone seeking to deliver an iOS app must accept Apple's terms, including Apple's cut of revenue.
That's only a monopoly in the same sense that McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs. It's within their own ecosystem. Customers can decide whether they want to buy into that ecosystem or choose an alternative (like Burger King, or Android).
Buying a burger is an independent transaction. Buying a Big Mac one day doesn't make you less likely to buy a Whopper the next.
Buying a phone is an investment that locks you into that ecosystem for ~2 years (until you buy a new one), and once that time comes, both ecosystems encourage you to stick with your existing choice via purchase transfers, exclusives, and (more) seamless data transfers.
Your comparison would only make sense in a world where McD and BK competed by lacing their burgers with different drugs to get you chemically addicted.
Fuck Apple, fuck Google, and fuck Tim Cook in particular. This is fucking depressing, and almost makes COVID seem appealing. At least it would take your mind off this bullshit for a while.
I think the best analogy would be video games on console platforms, does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games? Well, kind of if you squint really hard, not that it seems to stand in the way of a vibrant and competitive console industry and that's the key issue. If there's a competitive market that is serving customer needs, and no deceptive practices so customers have a clear choice then it's hard to argue there's a market dysfunction such as a monopoly.
Yes? The whole console industry is equally awful, and does the same bullshit. That said, there used to be a few mitigating factors for consoles, but they have never been relevant for phones:
1. Generational incompatibility: Since console generations generally weren't backwards-compatible, every new generation would more or less reset the playing field.
2. You could have multiple consoles connected to your TV. You probably won't bring multiple phones with you every day.
"That's only a monopoly in the same sense that McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs. It's within their own ecosystem. Customers can decide whether they want to buy into that ecosystem or choose an alternative" (like living in the next town over, or solar power, water delivery, and portable toilets).
The fact that alternatives exist (live somewhere else! live disconnected!) does not negate the fact that the utility is a monopoly provider of those services.
The primary difference between utility monopolies and the iOS monopoly is that utilities are a "natural" monopoly (there are significant infrastructure costs to enter the market of providing running water to homes in a city) whereas the iOS monopoly is government-granted via copyrights and contracts and digital locks that exclude competitors, and those locks are again protected by DMCA copyright law.
There is no natural reason there cannot be a competing app store on iOS, except that Apple wants to preserve its monopoly.
Would you let a home builder dictate what food delivery options you have? Why let a phone builder dictate what software delivery options you have?
This is one way Apple tries to lock people in, and it's really frustrating. This isn't an efficient market situation, this is a monopolist protecting their walled garden kingdom by slurping up the cross platform innovators. I'm terribly disappointed in the Dark Sky authors for doing this to long time loyal customers, no matter what their paychecks look like.