The Justice Department is nearing the end of its long pondering about whether to sue Apple over antitrust issues:
Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system for the iPhone, which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services.
....The Apple suit would likely be even more expansive than previous challenges to the company, attacking its powerful business model that draws together the iPhone with devices like the Apple Watch and services like Apple Pay to attract and keep consumers loyal to its products. Rivals have said that they have been denied access to key Apple features, like the Siri virtual assistant, prompting them to argue the practices are anticompetitive.
These kinds of actions aren't illegal per se but they are illegal if you have a monopoly in the market, so the key to all this is whether Apple is a monopoly. Here is Apple's market share of the smartphone market:
Apple has controlled more than half of the smartphone market for the past decade and currently has about 57% market share. Is that enough to brand them as a monopoly? It's lower than IBM's share of the mainframe market while it was being sued for similar bundling practices, but not a lot less—so I'd say yes. But obviously Apple will argue otherwise.
The power of what Apple (and Alphabet) have done is exactly in creating the walled garden ecosystem of pieces that work together. You buy into an ecosystem today. Samsung tried to set one up and nobody wanted to play. Microsoft has their own ecosystem but it lives in the business world.
I don't know that this suit has any merit as it keeps junk out of the respective systems, much like a digital HOA.
Also, nobody has to buy an Apple product. Plenty of other phone/watch products on the market.
I think there's a fundamental difference between what Apple does and what Microsoft does. At least with Microsoft's ecosystem of stuff, you can use alternative software that can talk to or use the Microsoft files/systems (mostly... there are a few niche exceptions, such as Visio). It's that walling off of basic things that's at stake here.
Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that this suit will succeed at anything in that regard. The captive audience does have a choice, even if it's not a great one.
Make $280 per hour. Getting a job is not easy. In any case, you have access to a wealth of resources to help you with your work style. Become motivated to promote hundreds of jobs through job boards and vx30 career websites.
Take a look at this............................ https://careershome72.blogspot.com/
There! See? Cmayo is right. There's always a choice.
But one of them smells funny.
I don't know that this suit has any merit as it keeps junk out of the respective systems, much like a digital HOA.
I think most of what Apple does is fine. But they absolutely should allow some easy phone unlocking method for folks who want to add non Apple Store apps. Their current M.O. is very clearly an attempt to leverage their dominant hardware position into extracting rents from app developers. The memory of what Bill Gates did to them 40 years ago still smarts.
Now, I now the response is: but Apple wants its devices to work well, and there's a lot of crap out there, and a lot of viruses. They're protecting their customers!
To which I say: agreed! And toward this end Apple ought to be able to void the warranty if you upload un-approved apps provided the onus is on them to show doing so is actually what caused your device's problems.
I should have the ability to damn well upload any software I want into the $1,200 handheld computer they sold me (and that they call a "phone").
This seems to me a reasonable compromise.
I typed this comment on a Macbook Air (amazing fucking laptop for the price) and my phone is an iPhone 14, if that's relevant.
What you describe as Alphabet's walled garden has, in fact, many many different corporate entities as part of that ecosystem. I think this is a very significant distinction in the area that Kevin is talking about.
Google does not try to freeze out other people from having their own app store, for instance. Amazon has one for the Kindle/Kindle Fire and so on.
Googles phones typically use standard USB2 connectors (*cough*). There really is a difference between what these two ecosystems do as far as phones are concerned.
"Google does not try to freeze out other people from having their own app store, for instance. Amazon has one for the Kindle/Kindle Fire and so on."
Not so. I'm not real familiar with Google but this was the heart of the recent Epic/Google court battle. Google blocked Epic from setting up its own store without paying royalties to Google.
Google lost that battle but Apple mostly won its battle with Epic. In that case the judge ruled Apple was not an "illegal monopoly".
To me this is all a little confusing. I mean, CVS makes store brand copies of everything and puts them on the shelf next to national brands. So does Safeway, Costco and others.
Disney controls their properties. I can't go to Disneyland and setup a booth selling Bugs Bunny dolls.
Market share defined how? Units, or revenue?
Normally the figure rendered shows usage: percentage using Apple vs. Android. In the US, at least, many (I think still most) people don't buy their phones, but lease them from carriers, so this muddies the water on revenue. But Apple's revenue share would exceed its user base percentage, given the higher price point.
Well, the relevant question is about how significant their market control is. Which requires asking, which markets are we talking about? There are a lot of them - physical computers shaped like what we call phones now, instant messaging, streaming music and TV, etc. etc. etc.
Nobody is pretending Apple has a monopoly in retail music streaming, for instance. But interestingly, they are claiming that about the damn blue bubbles, despite there being no end to competing messaging services. (This is a little blurry to nontechnical people because of SMS fallback, but iMessage is not SMS.)
Complaining about interop between phones and watches is just silly, like complaining that my Mac can't run use XBox accessories. I realize we live in the age of rampant liability mitigation (in large part because of nonsense like these suits), but if you buy add-on accessories, you probably want the thing that they're adding-on to.
There's a far, far better case to be made about the App Store. Apple is downright extortionate there, is very clearly shaping the market by forcing developers into subscription models and insisting free apps have some revenue component (so Apple gets their 30% of something), and so on. Oh, and the market is quite clearly defined: you are excluded from it if Apple says you are.
If you look at it from Apple's perspective, they're the ones creating the audience and they want to get paid for providing the audience. Your "free" app probably has a revenue component of ads, so the customer is paying in attention and Apple can't get a piece of that action. They're providing the eyeballs and want to get paid for it.
👍👍👍
If you look at it from Apple's perspective, they're the ones creating the audience and they want to get paid for providing the audience.
They absolutely should get a cut, just like any other retailer. Agreed! But what they shouldn't be able to do is exert such pressure their own hardware users not to visit other stores.
Imagine if Nordstrom could somehow require their shoe customers to also buy their socks there.
Heh. Fact is, I can use an Apple tablet as an input device for my PC. I _cannot_ use an Android tablet as an input device to a Mac (though I admit this is all to the best of my knowledge; though I know I'm right on the former, I don't know if I'm wrong on the latter.)
An HHI of 5000 is extremely high.
Is it? I think it's more of a question of whether these actions were anti-competitive. At least, that's how it's going to go down in the EU.
In the US, if you apply Bork's doctrine of what anticompetitive behavior looks like -- harm to the consumer or user -- I think there's a relatively easy case to be made that Apple's structure keeps prices artificially inflated once you're locked into their system.
I think there's a relatively easy case to be made that Apple's structure keeps prices artificially inflated once you're locked into their system.
Right. Certainly the dearth of app customers who don't use the App Store (their phones literally cannot load non App Store apps without a cumbersome unlocking process) means app developers face intense pressure to sell their wares mainly or solely via Cupertino. Which in turn gives the latter enormous pricing power in terms of the cut it demands from said developers.
How to define the market will be the first big legal argument in any case that's brought. But the barrier to crossover is so high that you could plausibly argue that these are two separate markets you are comparing. And Apple has 100% of the iOS market.
Heh. Fact is, I can use an Apple tablet as an input device for my PC. I _cannot_ use an Android tablet as an input device to a Mac (though I admit this is all to the best of my knowledge; though I know I'm right on the former, I don't know if I'm wrong on the latter.)
Reply to wrong comment, my apologies.
Apple's IOS App Store is a lot like AT&T's control of what could be connected to its system. You couldn't just buy a phone, plug it in and have telephone service. You had to buy one of the approved models sold by AT&T. This let AT&T use its marketing power to make more money by suppressing innovation. When AT&T was forced to allow users to install their own equipment, there was a barrier against bad actors since setting up a telephone factory is much more expensive than opening an app store.
Apple is doing something similar with its IOS store. You can't just load an application and use it. In both cases, there were valid security reasons. AT&T didn't want weird signals running down its wires and messing up its phone exchange system. Similarly, Apple doesn't want applications that compromise user security, defraud users or detract from Apple's curated image. The first two may have technical fixes, though an open App Store offers a much larger attack surface to deal with. The last would guarantee a Nazi app store, several abusive app stores, even more fraudulent app stores, a Google app store, a bunch of auto-dial spam calling app stores that pay your phone bill, a snuff porn app store and so on.
Opening the App Store to alternative payment methods is simply a matter of profit. Opening the App Store more completely is more serious since a lot of the appeal of the iPhone and its ecosystem is its curation. In contrast, AT&T never placed restrictions on who could connect as long as they were willing to pay and use AT&T equipment. I expect Apple to have to be more open on payment issues, but come up with a scheme for limiting who can open an app store. We already have this promise with SMS, since anyone with a few thousand dollars can set up an SMS handling system and intercept SMS traffic.
Totally agree, it's as much about image as it is security and revenue. Apple is famous for their secure walled garden and that by itself is a huge revenue driver for them. By the same token, you're never going to find Game of Thrones streaming on Disney no matter how high the profit potential might be, the subscriber loss of people who pay to NOT see that type of content is too great. Apple owns a very specific niche.
Opening the App Store more completely is more serious since a lot of the appeal of the iPhone and its ecosystem is its curation.
It's not necessary for Apple to open its app store. They merely need to make it feasible for average users to use other sources for software. I think Apple should be apple to charge whatever margins the market will bear for access to their retail space (the iOS App Store). My objection is when they do this and they render it impossible for commercially relevant competition to exist outside their app store.