If you recall, Microsoft got a punch in the nose for their abuse of market power, stuck with billion-dollar fines for it, then more similarly scaled fines when they tried to circumvent the ruling in 2013.

They learned an important corporate lesson, which is why Xbox games can link to external subscription payment options.

Apple have not yet learned this lesson.

Microsoft held significantly more market power at the time of their antitrust case (95%) than Apple currently does.

That did not set 95% as some kind of magic threshold. The test is written as "a dominant position within the common market or in a substantial part of it". The jurisprudence on this actually starts at 40%. Of the $100bn global app store sector pie, Apple have ~2/3 of it.

I am aware of that, however it is much easier to win an antitrust case against a company that has 95% market share.

> The jurisprudence on this actually starts at 40%.

Can you provide more background on this?

You can do worse than start with the, er, "brief synopsis" of the history of Article 102 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_t....

As one might imagine the full history is a bottomless pit of claim, counterclaim, strong-arm tactics, PR, subversion, argument, opinion etc where the truth goes to die.

You're citing EU law but this case between Apple and Epic is happening in a US court, which has historically held higher requirements for the finding of monopoly power (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24312856). For what it's worth I do agree that Epic would be more likely to prevail if this case was under EU jurisdiction.

I don't think iPhone/iOS market shares in the EU are high enough. I couldn't find a definitive source, but it seems to be somewhere between 14% [1] and 25% [2], the latter in the wealthier European markets.

These numbers also include UK (I think), a traditionally strong market for Apple, but which should be out of EU Single Market by the end of the year.

IANAL, but I don't think that's enough for Epic to have a case in the EU. On the other hand I could see the EU being more likely than the US to regulate these kind of stores, to try to protect European editors against Apple/Google. But the lobbying would have to come from European editors, not from Epic.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/08/12/iphone-market-share-in-europe...

[2] https://macdailynews.com/2020/01/29/iphone-takes-24-3-smartp...

This isn’t about device sales. The market in consideration is the $100bn/yr app-store market, of which Apple has 2/3 globally and around 55% of the European segment in 2019.

Yes, my remark above was about EU fines applied to Microsoft.

What might lead one to think it hasn't already attracted the interest of regulators outside the US? These battles are fought globally.

EU has already started an antitrust investigation into apples app store. Most likely they will get hit with a huge fine.

> The European Commission has opened formal antitrust investigations to assess whether Apple's rules for app developers on the distribution of apps via the App Store violate EU competition rules. The investigations concern in particular the mandatory use of Apple's own proprietary in-app purchase system and restrictions on the ability of developers to inform iPhone and iPad users of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities outside of apps.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

The case is not about closed platforms in general, it's about monopolistic behavior. In the US (the legal jurisdiction), Apple is the largest smartphone vendor by far, with ~50% market share. Epic is trying to show that Apple is abusing its market dominance. That's the case.

Apple has 52.4% mobile marketshare in the US[1]

The Justice department has said that more that 50% is generally required to be considered a monopoly power, but 70% is a stronger case[2] (not a lawyer, if someone can parse this better please do)

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

[2]https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...

The PS4 has 58% of the gaming console market currently.

I’m trying to figure out where the monopoly argument comes from. Apple hasn’t demonstrated that they have monopoly pricing power since even the Windows store takes 30% and they’re obviously using their dominance in the smartphone space to advantage themselves in… the smartphone space.

Windows and the Apple App Store don’t complete with each other.

Also, if PlayStation has control of that much of the market, perhaps there ought to be some regulations there as well. Does Sony similarly force all in game sales to use their payment processor and forbid you from mentioning it or encouraging folks to pay you directly?

There shouldn’t be any regulation of PlayStation, because consumers are actively choosing to buy into the PlayStation ecosystem. By the same vein, consumers are actively choosing to buy into the iOS ecosystem. No consumer has been forced into being part of the iOS or PlayStation ecosystem.

You seem to be ignoring the monopoly aspect.

The argument is that when a vendor controls a large enough portion of the market, consumers might not be left with sufficient choice for market forces to prevent abusive behaviors. This idea has significant legal precedent and legislation behind it throughout the entire western world.

The question isn't whether you actively chose to buy into the PlayStation ecosystem. It's whether you had a meaningful choice available to you and whether the vendor is abusing it's market power.

Correct I don't by a Playstation and then cry that Stadia is not available for it.

The % is not enough in itself, otherwise the case would be very short, open and shut. The question is, does Sony abuse its market power?

If console developers are satisfied with the deal, then it's hard to say that it's abusive.

Also, there's no specific % cut that can be said to be excessive, outside of context. In some cases, a 50% cut may be a good deal. It sounds to me like console vendors may be returning better value for their cut than Apple does.

In my opinion as an Apple developer, Apple returns very little value for its 30% cut. I'd be happy to pay 30% if it was worth it, but it's not.

So when someone breaks TOS of Sony store there are no consequences?

To me this is exactly where their argument falls apart.

I don’t get what Epic wants exactly. Even with Android where they initially had users side load their apps they eventually gave up and put it on the Play Store after complaining that there’s too many warnings when users load third party APKs (how dare they include security warnings of un-reviewed apps!)

It seems to me that Epic expects Apple and Google to offer up an Epic App Store/Epic made games in their own App Stores free of charge, and conveniently ignore any developer terms they previously agreed to. Talk about entitlement.

They want platform providers (Apple with iOS and Google with Android) to get out of the way. They are both providing platforms, as well as market places, as well as competing apps/services.

How do they expect those competing platforms to be delivered? If via side loading through a website then we’ve already seen them complain about Google having warnings for that.

If through the app stores themselves then they’re essentially asking for discoverability, hosting, and distribution of their products for free.

At what point does a company deserve the right to compete with you on your own product? If Amazon continues to engulf online shopping can another company eventually sue to have their own store listings put on Amazon with no money going to Amazon?

To me these two situations aren’t that different. Apple and Google have each built hardware and software systems for their services. Other companies like Samsung have developed their own app stores that they distribute on their phones. If Epic wants to be a service provider then there are already charted pathways to doing so that don’t involve suing over service fees you already agreed to.

> At what point does a company deserve the right to compete with you on your own product?

I get where you're coming from, I do -- but the answer to your question is somewhere around "when that company controls access to billions of eyeballs around the planet".

These companies have greater access to and control of people than any government. They are beyond review, beyond accountability, and beyond reach. They are dictatorships controlling access to billions of people, the kind of power that would make any dictator in history blush.

And I am not saying we should take from them all their power. They DID earn it, it's true and most of it is quite benign. But... giving them absolute power over who everyone in the world can do business with, just because they chose to buy that device (probably not knowing what the limitations would be)? For the sake of the future of the entire species I should think that this is not a situation we would consider ideal.

If the companies have become too large then I feel that’s really the responsibility of anti-trust regulators to address rather than the courts making a ruling that you have to let other companies sell their services in your store.

Actually I agree; but right now the US political landscape is extremely, painfully broken :-(

Unless things have changed in the past couple of years it's not just a single security warning the first time you side load an app. On my device, F-Droid can't seem to update apps itself - rather I get a security warning dialog for _every single app_ whenever I do updates. This is in spite of the fact that I approved the initial security warning when installing the F-Droid apk itself and granted it all of the permissions it requested.

In android's case, it's a lot simpler. Epic wants to partner with manufacturers who can preinstall epic's store, which google currently forbids.

So this is step one and they intend to sue for more and more with the Epic endgame of getting the Epic store preloaded on iPhone? I look forward to the never ending news cycle.

They don't want the warnings from Android yet don't want to put the work/money in to build their own OS, even using AOSP (Android Open Source).

If Google's work on Android entitles them to be the only store on all Android-derived devices, what rights do Linus Torvalds and all the other Linux contributors have? Or is Google allowed to monetize their work for free, but Epic isn't?

Both companies contribute to the open commons with open source software and sponsorships.

I think the right for Google to monetize and place restrictions mainly centers around the Play Services which are all tied back into their non open source projects.

You could probably make a reasonable argument that Play Services are specifically designed to undermine the spirit of open source, but theoretically you could build an alternative, and use AOSP however you wish.

If we take Epic at their word, a better deal?