There's a reason for that. Not everything can be defined clearly. If every law gets defined down to a t, we will be in a very sorry state indeed. (off topic, but that seems to be happening more and more, with every lawsuit that goes to court and gets somewhat arbitrarily -and permanantly- defined)
Say we are a group of musicians and we hate the fact that a big chunk of our money is going to giants including ones from authoritarian countries... so we the musicians think . "let's make our own steaming platform, all the profit goes to the musicians"... what is the problem then?
Did you found it ?
If mobile devices, consoles and computers are locked then I will not be able to realize my dream of removing the parasites from the industry, I would be happy to pay for the SDK, to pay for a genous to review the app, to pay for the bandwith of the updates, but I will not be happy to let a parasite to suck 30% of my sales(NOT even profit)
Apple forbids you to put a link or a text message in your app to inform the users that they could pay for a subscription or product on a webpage.
So how can we spin "forcing developers not to inform users so users pay more and Apple makes more money" in such a way where this is not "screwing users". If I was a fanboy I would say that "most iOS users are poor old grandmas and to much information and options is too much for them AND for sure the grandma hit I agree on the TOS where Apple says that they force users to hide useful information"
Let's see if the EU says "No, it is" and shakes apple for some money.
1. Is Apple using their platform to promote their services? Yes.
2. Is Apple making it harder for competition to compete on their platform? Yes. Someone mentioned Apple Music is not a subject to 15-30% fees while Spotify is.
3. Are companies building platforms to do exactly that? Also yes. There’s no point in building platform and not using the benefits of controlling it.
So where does that leave us? Apple is doing exactly as you’d expect it to do. Government will try to restrict that, that’s what it’s for. What I don’t get is why people are so emotional about it. It’s all out in the open, why pretend Apple isn’t using their platform ownership to undermine completion? Why get upset that they do? People perceive this situation as black and white, nothing in between.
Apple developed a platform and says to developers "pay is 30 percent to use it" sounds fair to me. Huge streaming service comes along "I want to use you platform but not pay the fee".
How is that remotely fair? No one is making Spotify use it. What right has any one or any company got to demand special treatment. Many other app developers are fine with the fee. If they weren't, they wouldnt use it. It's a choice.
Also "abusing market position" what does that mean. It's purposely broad, it can mean anything.