Apple and Google 'Duopoly' to Come Under Scrutiny in the UK

[DakotaGuy]

Folks assuming that they’re going to force the creation of a third OS are completely missing the point. That’s a stupid idea and isn’t what’s going to happen. What may happen is the creation of rules and regulations that aim to prevent Apple and Google from unfairly abusing their market power.

Rules and regulations rarely mean a better product. If the rules and regulations prevent increased profits due to product improvement then investing capital into that becomes pointless. You can easily regulate away innovation and I wouldn’t trust a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians that don’t even understand the tech industry to attempt to control it. Free market has given us a couple of outstanding mobile operating systems. There is a duopoly because the consumer made a choice. If there was a third option would anyone here really choose it? Doubtful.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Blackberry should still be around but unfortunately many people were misinformed about it. Sad really, because it's a better product than Android that's still around.

are talking BB10?

i oriniginally thought so too. Even participated & interviewed of my thoughts on Toronto launch day of BB10 & Z10 (bought 3 of those regrettably). This while supporting BB10 devices as a SME on BES5 at head office of 2ND largest gold company back in 2010-2012. BESFusion was a joke, too rushed, lots of failed misses that BES5 had & delayed real server admin software launch 2yrs after Z10 launch. BB Tablet also showcased its shortcomings despite hardware vs hardware being better than any iPad or android tablet for a year at launch. The software was crap! Very limiting and slow! This all occurred in 2011 and at work we were transitioning to a new server, iPhone support & iPad rollout!

from a head of investor relegations the, Irwin, he should me what was possible on iOS & iPad & I was eyes opened. iPhone 5 launched that fall. I & that company never looked back since. 98% rollout less I.T. troubleshooting nor support time for 420 users in 2 months was like feeding starving cookie monsters. Our vendors barely could keep up with demands but flawless rollout. In 6yrs of supporting BBOS/BB10 never ever experienced that.


blackberry was junk & slow to adapt. They lost when they had emotional support. They didn’t get the job done.

 

[octoberist3]

5 OS were around:

ios
android
windows mobile
bb10
webos

also the browsers are open sourced coded which eu shut down Microsoft for bundling junk browser using proprietary browser code in windows. WebKit browsers get the best of the best. It’s like the eu is against open market competition lol.

The problem is that these new regulations are being written mostly by tech luddite lawyers who largely get their input and complaints from unhappy developers and tech-industry insiders — not the customers who use and rely on these technologies for everyday needs.

 

[gregmancuso]

It would definitely be an odd world if every time Apple added some new functionality it had to make provision at the same time for a competitor to compete with that new functionality. On that basis we might as well just have a government mandated operating system.

Don't give them any ideas.

 

[vipergts2207]

Rules and regulations rarely mean a better product. If the rules and regulations prevent increased profits due to product improvement then investing capital into that becomes pointless. You can easily regulate away innovation and I wouldn’t trust a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians that don’t even understand the tech industry to attempt to control it. Free market has given us a couple of outstanding mobile operating systems. There is a duopoly because the consumer made a choice. If there was a third option would anyone here really choose it? Doubtful.

On the contrary, rules and regulations that ensure fair competition can do much to foster innovation. If regulations cause Apple to decide to not invest, then competitors who want to innovate in that space will. Apple already has something like $200 billion in cash on hand, so Apple certainly has nothing to worry about regarding available capital to invest. And if Apple decides not to invest in its future just because they now have to compete on a level playing field, the $200 billion will slowly become worth less and less as inflation marches on. Shareholders certainly wouldn't be happy. Allowing them to artificially hobble potential competitors and not needing to compete is what can lead to a lack of innovation.

And the "free market" is rarely free. If it were truly free almost everything would be owned by one giant conglomerate by now as no safe guards would exist to prevent it. What prevents that are rules and regulations that ensure market participants don't abuse their position. I'm sure both AT&T and Standard Oil had a lot of "good" reason why they shouldn't have faced government action either.

 

[mrochester]

On the contrary, rules and regulations that ensure fair competition can do much to foster innovation. If regulations cause Apple to decide to not invest, then competitors who want to innovate in that space will. Apple already has something like $200 billion in cash on hand, so Apple certainly has nothing to worry about regarding available capital to invest. And if Apple decides not to invest in its future just because they now have to compete on a level playing field, the $200 billion will slowly become worth less and less as inflation marches on. Allowing them to artificially hobble potential competitors and not needing to compete is what can lead to a lack of innovation.

And the "free market" is rarely free. If it were truly free almost everything would be owned by one giant conglomerate by now as no safe guards would exist to prevent it. What prevents that are rules and regulations that ensure market participants don't abuse their position.

Are you suggesting Apple should be less innovative to allow competitors a greater chance?

 

[k2k koos]

Considering everything nowadays runs with CPU's and operating systems (your car for example) these sort of cases have no merit. Apple clearly sells a product that is a closed ecosystem, they make the hardware and software, and therefore there's no choice but theirs. BMW sells you a car that has al sorts of infotainment software running to let you operate the car incl it's stereo etc, no one is asking them to allow Mercedes's software onto it, or only get the BMW software via a BMW dealer or authorised reseller... we all accept that, Apple, in my view operates the same way so why are we complaining we can't get our software from elsewhere? Now if I was selling an open architecture , it's a different story, then I invite competition. Apple doesn't,and I for one, think that's a good thing, and the reason things 'just work'.

 

[mrochester]

Considering everything nowadays runs with CPU's and operating systems (your car for example) these sort of cases have no merit. Apple clearly sells a product that is a closed ecosystem, they make the hardware and software, and therefore there's no choice but theirs. BMW sells you a car that has al sorts of infotainment software running to let you operate the car incl it's stereo etc, no one is asking them to allow Mercedes's software onto it, or only get the BMW software via a BMW dealer or authorised reseller... we all accept that, Apple, in my view operates the same way so why are we complaining we can't get our software from elsewhere? Now if I was selling an open architecture , it's a different story, then I invite competition. Apple doesn't,and I for one, think that's a good thing, and the reason things 'just work'.

And there’s nothing stopping other companies from competing directly with Apple with their own vertically integrated ecosystem. In fact I think it would be brilliant for competition if we had a number of different vertically integrated companies competing for us to buy our phones, tablets, smart watches and computers from them.

 

[vipergts2207]

Are you suggesting Apple should be less innovative to allow competitors a greater chance?

You'd have to extraordinarily misunderstand what I wrote to think that's what I was saying..

 

[vipergts2207]

Considering everything nowadays runs with CPU's and operating systems (your car for example) these sort of cases have no merit. Apple clearly sells a product that is a closed ecosystem, they make the hardware and software, and therefore there's no choice but theirs. BMW sells you a car that has al sorts of infotainment software running to let you operate the car incl it's stereo etc, no one is asking them to allow Mercedes's software onto it, or only get the BMW software via a BMW dealer or authorised reseller... we all accept that, Apple, in my view operates the same way so why are we complaining we can't get our software from elsewhere? Now if I was selling an open architecture , it's a different story, then I invite competition. Apple doesn't,and I for one, think that's a good thing, and the reason things 'just work'.

Please point out which automaker is a monopoly or part of a duopoly. If you can't, then you really don't understand why Apple and Google are being examined in the first place.

 

[mrochester]

You'd have to extraordinarily misunderstand what I wrote to think that's what I was saying..

Consider your statement extraordinarily misunderstood then!

 

[Alan Wynn]

It's like the point is almost within your grasp, but then proceeds slips right through your fingers. One reason that 200GB of iCloud storage isn't free is because Apple knows it doesn't have to offer that, so tens (hundreds?) of millions of consumers continue to fork over money to Apple every month just so they can backup their phone to the cloud. They have locked out competition.

Sorry, what you want creates serious security issues. Backing up the OS and its settings would require giving an application access to all data on the device and that would require eliminating sandboxing.

The problem is granularity at which people want to require competition. Apple and Google made different choices and provide different options for their users. People who want an open environment with different phones with different designs from a diverse set of manufacturers at a broad range of price points pick Android. People who want a secure, private, locked down experience, with a tightly integrated ecosystem, pick Apple.

There are other options (like LinuxPhone), that interest even smaller groups.

 

[Alan Wynn]

I don't know the technical ins and outs, but retrieving a backup from a different source doesn't exactly strike me as an overly complex problem to solve.

This is because you have no understanding of the problem. Like many things, it is easy to say, but hard or impossible to implement. To be able to back up all aspects of the device, an app needs to have access outside its sandbox. That is a serious security problem. Allowing arbitrary restores would also create security issues.

This is just the the argument that says: ”We should have encryption that is secure, but open so the ‘the government’ can get past it.“ It is just not possible. Either it is secure or it is not.

 

[im_to_hyper]

Pointless. A third OS was around, but no one wanted it enough.

Blackberry OS 10 was great, and even coexisted with windows mobile 8.1 and windows 10 mobile. All great operating systems.

 

[mrochester]

Sorry, what you want creates serious security issues. Backing up the OS and its settings would require giving an application access to all data on the device and that would require eliminating sandboxing.

The problem is granularity at which people want to require competition. Apple and Google made different choices and provide different options for their users. People who want an open environment with different phones with different designs from a diverse set of manufacturers at a broad range of price points pick Android. People who want a secure, private, locked down experience, with a tightly integrated ecosystem, pick Apple.

There are other options (like LinuxPhone), that interest even smaller groups.

What I find bizarre about the whole argument is, as you say, the level of granularity that the argument is happening at.

Instead of apple being forced to allow iCloud backups to onedrive or Dropbox simply because they made a successful product in a competitive market, why is the solution not for Microsoft and Dropbox to create competing ecosystems that backup their devices to onedrive or Dropbox respectively?

Regulating the minutia of what happens on apple devices does not solve the problem that the only ecosystems to realistically choose from are iOS and android. That is where the regulation needs to exist to allow a competitor to emerge, such as forcing horizontally integrated companies to make their apps available for all ecosystems so that they are equally attractive to consumers and therefore equal in market power and dominance and therefore remain competitive against one another (I.e., make what google did to Microsoft with windows phone illegal).

The trouble then is that small app developers are encumbered with having to make apps work with multi-ecosystems, and they’d complain about that too.

 

[vipergts2207]

Sorry, what you want creates serious security issues. Backing up the OS and its settings would require giving an application access to all data on the device and that would require eliminating sandboxing.

The problem is granularity at which people want to require competition. Apple and Google made different choices and provide different options for their users. People who want an open environment with different phones with different designs from a diverse set of manufacturers at a broad range of price points pick Android. People who want a secure, private, locked down experience, with a tightly integrated ecosystem, pick Apple.

There are other options (like LinuxPhone), that interest even smaller groups.

Think outside of the box just a little bit. Apple could do something like pull core software from their own servers and then photos, music, and other data (ya know, the bulk of the data on the device that necessitates the purchase of cloud storage plans in the first place) from wherever the user has chosen to backup their device. I'm pretty sure Google operates in the same way as Apple regarding phone backups as well, though I've never used Android and could be wrong.

 

[Alan Wynn]

Please point out which automaker is a monopoly or part of a duopoly. If you can't, then you really don't understand why Apple and Google are being examined in the first place.

I reject your premise. There is no “duopoly”, in the mobile phone space there are many different ways to look at the market. Operating system platforms: Android Open Source Platform, Android with Google Services, iOS and LinuxPhone.
Hardware manufacturers: Too many to list.

Both AOSP and Android with Google service allow alternate application stores. Amazon had an Android application store for a long time. They had a hard time getting developers to release applications in there store, as there was no real benefit to them and despite spending a lot of money promoting it, consumers were not interested.

Consumers have lots of choice. All you want to do is eliminate a choice from the market. Many users (including me), want an environment that is locked down and focused on privacy and security, and is part of a tightly integrated ecosystem. That is why we buy into Apple’s ecosystem and do not buy any of the other three options.

No one is forced to buy into that ecosystem and no one is forced to stay.

 

[jimbobb24]

You can understand most of these investigations as a gang shaking down a local business. The govt just wants more of the action. It’s pretty simple.

 

[vipergts2207]

What I find bizarre about the whole argument is, as you say, the level of granularity that the argument is happening at.

Instead of apple being forced to allow iCloud backups to onedrive or Dropbox simply because they made a successful product in a competitive market, why is the solution not for Microsoft and Dropbox to create competing ecosystems that backup their devices to onedrive or Dropbox respectively?

Regulating the minutia of what happens on apple devices does not solve the problem that the only ecosystems to realistically choose from are iOS and android. That is where the regulation needs to exist to allow a competitor to emerge, such as forcing horizontally integrated companies to make their apps available for all ecosystems so that they are equally attractive to consumers and therefore equal in market power and dominance and therefore remain competitive against one another (I.e., make what google did to Microsoft with windows phone illegal).

The trouble then is that small app developers are encumbered with having to make apps work with multi-ecosystems, and they’d complain about that too.

It's true, one solution would be for other competitors to come in and be successful so that Apple and Google are no longer duopolies. However, solely basing potential solutions on that one possible outcome is to ignore reality as it exists and will likely continue to exist unless acted upon. A competitor coming in and establishing an ecosystem that rivals Apple and Google would be an absolutely monumental undertaking. Blackberry bit the dust long ago. The behemoth that is Microsoft tried and failed. Amazon could possibly give it a go, but they'd likely adopt the same anti-competitive tactics, were they successful. If there's anyone more anti-competitive in tech than Apple or Google, it's surely Amazon.

Additionally, I think some of what is happening here is to conflate one example of Apple setting up their ecosystem to insulate themselves from competition with the totality of their actions. Apple's behavior extends far beyond how one backs up their iPhone. It's game steaming app limitations, it's the way no competing wallets are allowed, it's NFC access, it's only allowing apps from their own app store. There are many examples where Apple has conveniently structured things (sometimes for legitimate reasons as well, to be sure) to not allow anyone to compete with them.

 

[visualseed]

It is the UK. Apple and Google could just take any decision under advisement and keep doing what they are doing. I guess they could ban iOS and the Google PlayStore and force citizens to use Chinese phones and app stores while they figure out how to roll their own. /s

 

[vipergts2207]

I reject your premise. There is no “duopoly”, in the mobile phone space there are many different ways to look at the market. Operating system platforms: Android Open Source Platform, Android with Google Services, iOS and LinuxPhone.
Hardware manufacturers: Too many to list.

Both AOSP and Android with Google service allow alternate application stores. Amazon had an Android application store for a long time. They had a hard time getting developers to release applications in there store, as there was no real benefit to them and despite spending a lot of money promoting it, consumers were not interested.

Consumers have lots of choice. All you want to do is eliminate a choice from the market. Many users (including me), want an environment that is locked down and focused on privacy and security, and is part of a tightly integrated ecosystem. That is why we buy into Apple’s ecosystem and do not buy any of the other three options.

No one is forced to buy into that ecosystem and no one is forced to stay.

You can reject whatever you want, but that doesn't make your viewpoint accurate. What's telling is that when you listed OS platforms, you had to list Android twice and include an OS that has a market share of less than two tenths of a percent, amounting to nothing more than a rounding error. The technical existence of a truly inconsequential "competitor" does not somehow magically nullify the existence of a duopoly.

And talking about hardware manufacturers is completely beside the point, as the methods that Apple and Google use to act in anti-competitive ways is through their software, not hardware. Apple didn't use hardware to disallow game streaming apps, they did it through software and terms and conditions.

I'm not asking for any choice to be eliminated from the market. I want to see limits placed on Apple's and Google's ability to act in anti-competitive ways. Choosing between a fair, competitive environment and security is a false dichotomy. I generally enjoy Apple's walled garden approach myself, but innovation slows when the big guys are allowed to further entrench and insulate themselves from competition. With competition, Apple would be forced to charge less for their services or continue to innovate on them to make them worth paying more for than what their competitors offer. Saying that Apple users can go to Google (or vice-versa) completely misses the fact that consumers are then just shuffling between two anti-competitive halves of a duopoly.

 

[purplehaze0]

What universe are they working out of? I’ve seen incredible innovation over the last 10+ years, and I’ve seen hardware and software prices fall. How exactly is the consumer being harmed?

What Apple hardware has fallen in price? I’m not trying to be clever I just can’t think of significant price reductions from Apple.

 

[cnnyy20p]

This is dumb. The reason Google and Apple have this so called "duopoly" is because they have a better product than the competition. It's as simple as that. Blackberry had a chance, they blew it. Microsoft had a chance, they blew it. Not Google and Apple's fault if the competition sucks more than my ex gf.

Google did not create a Youtube app for Windows Phone then Microsoft created a client app themselves. Later Google blocked them. Google had right to do this. But you get the point. (Simply it died because there were no mainstream apps and games. And sucks API)

 

[gregmancuso]

Think outside of the box just a little bit. Apple could do something like pull core software from their own servers and then photos, music, and other data (ya know, the bulk of the data on the device that necessitates the purchase of cloud storage plans in the first place) from wherever the user has chosen to backup their device. I'm pretty sure Google operates in the same way as Apple regarding phone backups as well, though I've never used Android and could be wrong.

Then exactly how is doing this any different from what I asked in my first reply to you? You know - the one where I almost grasped the concept.

Backing up core components to iCloud so it's secure would require less than 5GB os storage (free). Backing files up to any other target already exists either in iCloud or to several other providers - several I listed for you.

So, what is the argument? Apple is anticompetitive because iCloud backup is paid? Not under this scenario you laid out. You even agreed that core services need to be secure so iCloud only. And, yes, Google does the same with Android and backups to a Google Account.

 

[B4U]

Maybe they want to level the playing field for a Facebook phone. I can see it now: "The Facebook phone. For the small business owners, because no one else cares about them except for Facebook."

Oh no...
It will only be used for target practice. 🤣
Then we will receive ads for ammunition.