>> That's an example of how competition is supposed to work. Phone makers sell their audience to the highest bidder.
> That's actually the opposite of how it's supposed to work. You're not supposed to be able to use your dominance in one market (cell phone manufacturing) to unfairly compete in another (search).
If you read the comment in question, there is no suggestion that the cell phone manufacturers are competing in the search market. They're taxing it, or selling to it.
So.... what are you trying to say?
Apple 25%, Samsung 34%, Huawei 17%, Xiaomi 10% in Europe
Sounds pretty fine for a market with healthy competition.
Really hard to call any of them a monopoly.
Google® has 94+% of mobile search in both US and EU!
Apple gets 11 billions/year to use Google as the default search engine
The remaining 61% (Samsung+Huawei+Xiaomi) is Android that means Google
Xiaomi defaults to Baidu in China, for example, but everywhere else, where the CPC has no direct control over the wires, they use Google because Google money is good even in China