But unless you can demonstrate that it sucks because Apple is doing something which qualifies as restraint-of-trade, which I would suggest is obviously not the case, that doesn't matter.
Theoretical competition is not sufficient to demonstrate absence of a monopoly.
The doctrine that it's your fault if your competitors suck makes no sense. It's weaponized tall-poppy syndrome.
The doctrine is that you can't exercise monopoly power in certain ways. Monopoly power is an empirical question, and does not turn on merely whether it is possible to describe a market in which another product exists, but whether that is a real market in which the products are in fact competitive.
But even if you have monopoly power, if you aren't illegally exercising it, you aren't in trouble. So you aren't punished for being an empirical monopoly.
iOS is not a monopoly since at least one other major operating system exists, with significant market share. (Whether Linux is or isn't a competitor is irrelevant.)
A monopoly by itself is not a problem. Only behavior ancillary to that monopoly is. But to get there you have you have a monopoly. I don't see how you make the case. Clearly consumers have choice.
Now, there's a case to be made for bad behavior, but its weak. Apple will argue that consumers have choices.
But I am not a lawyer, so I'll leave it up to the lawyers on both sides to earn some fees discussing it.
So, now let's introduce iOS into the equation. Apple can differentiate their product, but how much is considered acceptable before regulators complain? The DOJ was quite straightforward today, accusing Apple of using iMessage to degrade user experiences through exclusion. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a...?
Do they have pricing power? You can select any boundaries you want for markets to come up with any market share number you want, but the key empirical test is is there actual substitution effect or does Apple have the ability to charge monopoly rents. One of the major points of walled gardens is to create vendor lock-in and prevent price conpetition, and Apple has been masterful at that.
Or what the developers would bear. Although I think the actual costs are higher than some people would like to think (with human reviewers and stuff, not just infrastructure).
> If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with.
Would they? Apple changing their fees has no effect on Android. Android suffered from the stigma of being a second-class citizen for a while, when apps were developed for iOS first. If it is as you say, why did they not drop their fees back then?
> For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.
Right, but that’s a moral argument, not a legal one. Negative margins on hardware is a business decision. The law does not discriminate depending on your business plan. If 30% is extorsion, then whatever you do on the side does not make it stop being extorsion.
Is it though? On the hardware side sure but on the software side I don't see any competition. Both stores have close to identical practices and do not look like they compete over to get developers onboard. The only pricing change ever made was also made in reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied verbatim.
While not a strict monopoly, the lack of competition in this area between the only two players seems obvious.
They do. If you have something they want you will find out about it.
I think Apple is clearly anti-competitive and is definitely powerful enough to warrant regulatory action given past standards, but the same exclusivity deals like consoles (and even audiobooks) have is certainly not a common thing (outside of Apple's first-party apps of course, but I would agree that isn't really what we're talking about here). I think this deserves some explanation, as it does seem like an obvious anti-competitive move that Apple could make but doesn't.
I tend to think Occam's Razor applied here is that Apple realizes their vulnerability to regulation and didn't wish to serve their critics evidence on a silver platter. I think that's why they announced that they will (finally) add (an inferior implementation of) RCS to the iPhone after many years of refusing and telling people to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to text her. Or the (inferior) implementation of PWAs. This is very much speculation of course, and I'd love to hear other theories.
If the relevant market is found to be "Apps on iOS", or "Flagships phones in the US", Apple is more likely to be considered having a monopoly position than if the market is "phones in the world". The courts will have to decide on what the market is before deciding if Apple has monopoly power or not.
Apple has a monopoly though it's AppStore on over 2 billion devices though which it conducts $90,000,000,000 a year. That's more than a lot of countries GDP combined.
Saying Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of phone market is irrelevant.
The question though, is if Apple as the Platform (phone) provider, maintains it's monopoly (AppStore) though anti-competitive means.
Just like you have an illegal monopoly of 100% of the market of people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL".
2. people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL" is not a 'market' in any sense
> Market: an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.
I don't know the details of Epic's case, they may have lost the battle but seems they might not have lost the war...
Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it's a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globally, but Android is a real competitor even there. So I'd suggest the two situations are quite different.
If it's not a monopoly (which would be fine by itself anyway), it's hard to make the case that they are leveraging that monopoly in unhallowed ways.
All that said, clearly the DOJ think they have a case, and I imagine they've spent a LOT of man-hours thinking about it and forming an argument. More than the no-time-at-all I've spent thinking about it.