And when developers are forced to support all 5 big ones?
And when any benefit of a reduction in fees is completely lost because of the requirement to support all 5 stores?
If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners.
There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that is pro consumer about having Google, Amazon, and Facebook be able to run iOS app stores.
It will just raise costs for developers and harm consumers that way.
It will lead to exclusives just as we have in the online streaming world, so consumers are forced to deal with all of them.
That is a big assumption. Who is the forcing agent here you are positing? The whole point of making app stores a multiagent game is to reduce the leverage of one to force things on developers and consumers.
> If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners.
For this to happen as bad as today a) they all will need to see a benefit in picking winners b) they all will need to pick precisely the same winners.
The whole point of competition is giving power back to the end users (both app consumers and developers) in the form of choice. Any downside you mention is a competitive advantage first and app stores will have to synchronize hard and tight to forgo that to build a cartel against the users and developers (mind you they would also need to build precisely the same products with nothing to differentiate). And at its worst they still wouldn’t be worse than today’s single monopoly.
If this is true, then they will be forced to support any store that has 15% of the market or be worse of than they are today.
Some of the stores will just be bargain basement garbage with nasty policies and perhaps no less than 30% commission, but will have market power because they are owned by Facebook or google.
It will absolutely be worse than today’s monopoly.
If things are made even worse for developers, consumers will not benefit.
It’s true that there will be more ‘choices’ that everyone will be forced to make
But better software won’t be one.
Pro-consumer vs anti-publisher is a false equivalence. This is not a zero-sum game, not at all.