People change their minds as time goes on. When it comes to walled-gardens, I sure did.
Now I think they are borderline immoral.
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Apple Asks Indian Court to Block Antitrust Law Allowing $38 Billion Fine
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People change their minds as time goes on. When it comes to walled-gardens, I sure did.
Now I think they are borderline immoral.
Yup. And I will continue to complain as that’s the only way change can happen. Eventually, the whole world will stop catering to big tech. And consumers will be better off when they can use their iPhone and AirDrop to a Windows PC or Android tablet and etc. Customers should win.
You don't need any permission. However, when you're purchasing something. You should bare the responsibility of finding out if A works with B and so on. Expecting A to work with B just because "insert your opinion here". Isn't realistic. Every company has to make whatever it is they are making. Work the way they intended it to. Things of course can change over time and features get added or taken away. But, to also expect "just because insert thought here" to work for everything else as they made it work for their own system. Makes no sense.
If they informed you before you purchase that product A will not work outside the way we advertise it to work with our product. The consumer should take that into consideration before purchasing. It does not matter the reason why Apple doesn't support AirPods with Android phones. If that wasn't their intention to do so. So be it. Find another product that will work as you need it to work across platforms. While those of us that enjoy using AirPods on Apple devices, can continue to do so.
No one is stopping you from purchasing anything you want to purchase from any brand/company. But, they all have the right to make what they make work the way they wanted it to. Without being force to make it work exactly the same for some other brand/companies device.
So what you're saying essentially is "I don't care what the hundreds of millions of iOS users want and why they chose the Apple ecosystem, I want iOS to work how I say it should, other users be damned!".
I started using Mac's (SE30!) about 36 years ago and feel they offer all I want from a computer, with different embodiments (laptop, mini. iMac ...) and different price points. With a Mac you can run are huge variety of SW, vastly larger than the offering of the Mac App store.
Why doesn't Apple offer the same flexibility with the phone? Why do I have to use ONLY those Apps than Apple offers through it's iOS App store? The answer of course is very very simple, and has nothing to do with "security" or "privacy": Apple is greedy, very very greedy and the iPhone market is >50% of their turnover, which in turn has margins of >40%. Greed greed greed. That's why I can't side load Apps onto my iPhone.
This x1000.
If Apple allowed side loading and then after seeing the success of Apps closed it down to external installs THEN you’d have an antitrust issue. Same thing if Apple tried to close down macOS or Microsoft tried to close down Windows. In the same vein if Apple charged 15% and then saw the success and increased fees to 30% to make more money it would also be an antitrust issue.
iOS has always been closed and fees were set from the beginning. One of the primary conditions for abusing a monopoly is if you alter terms & conditions to favor yourself AFTER becoming a monopoly (market leader). Increasing fees (prices) is the obvious example but placing onerous conditions is another.
Apple reducing fees to 15% for small devs and subscriptions, allowing default Apps, allowing subs outside The App Store and other measures they’ve taken are the opposite of abusing a monopoly position. Apple has opened iOS up over the years.
About time Apple face fines proportionate to their wealth. Until this they've been happy to do what they want because the fines are like a mosquito bite to them. I hope this goes through.
I’m genuinely surprised it’s as high as 9%. I just left India last week after a 3 week stay. No one had iPhone except for the people on the tour group we were with.Apple marketshare in India… which should probably be mentioned… 9%. They have less marketshare than “Other”. Funny how some regions define “market dominance”.
India have made Apple jump through many hoops to sell iPhone in the country, well done Modi, I can’t imagine Apple will stick around if these are the risks it faces.
And, the deal has only gotten better as the vast majority of developers NEVER pull in over $1 million a year, so they’re paying 15% for getting access to MILLIONS of customers that have shown they’re willing to spend large sums on digital content.
Not likely, as every region that has obtained Alternate App Stores (that hardly anyone uses) has Apple running those alternate stores. No region has obtained “downloading Apps from anywhere”.
How about this, please point to 1 company in the EU that is affected by DMA.
It’s not a “coincidence” that no EU company is affected. It was literally the point of the legislation. Their arbitrarily definition of the quantitative measurements for gatekeeper designation was chosen to be so large that no EU company would reach it, but conveniently lower than the numbers non-EU companies had obtained. They even screwed up, realized that their numbers did NOT include the iPad, waited a year and, when the iPad STILL didn’t surpass the quantitative measurements, they just made it a gatekeeper anyway because, “One day, it might be.” Vestager’s decision.And, VERY specifically, “Music streaming” companies were left out of the areas for gatekeeper designation. Coincidence that Spotify is a large “music streaming” company based in the EU? Largest in the world? Noooooooooooooooo.
But, yes.
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I’ve got the iPad that does what I want with the performance I want at the price I wanted to pay, so I’d say shareholders, executives and “reasonable individuals with realistic expectations and don’t need a product to be like macOS to be a produce they enjoy using” win.
Apple is like an atm to foreign governments. But let’s not tax them appropriately.
The law was written to target American companies; just because they didn’t come out and write it into the law doesn’t change the fact. If I write a law that applies to “any electronics company named after a fruit” that law targets Apple. That’s essentially what happened with the DMA. The law was laser targeted to avoid hitting EU companies.
Case in point, Spotify was specifically excluded as a gatekeeper - unless it is amended, the law CANNOT apply to Spotify even if it meets all other criteria.
- Significant impact on internal market: Either €7.5 billion annual EU turnover for 3 years OR €75 billion market cap
- Spotify's current market cap: $130B, last year's: $92B
- Important gateway: 45 million monthly active EU users AND 10,000 yearly active business users
- Spotify has approximately 181-182 million monthly active users in Europe
- There are over 11 million artists and creators (i.e., business users) on the Spotify platform
The fact of the matter is that European regulators intentionally and surgically designed the DMA's scope just narrowly enough to capture American tech giants while avoiding Europe's few successful global platforms. The exclusion of music streaming, a category where intermediation exists and market power is just as concentrated as the other CPS is the smoking gun here. Why was it excluded? I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it just so happens to be dominated by a Swedish company that was among the most vocal supporters of the DMA. Couldn't possibly be that.
Of the six initial gatekeepers, five were American, one was Chinese, and zero were European (despite the EU being home to the world's second-largest economy). One of the strongest backers of the law said the EU shouldn't "include a European gatekeeper just to please Joe Biden" and strongly argued (successfully) to increase the revenue limits to ensure EU companies weren't hit. (Yes, I know Booking.com was designated later, though I'd point out that it's fully owned by an American corporation despite having an EU HQ. Even if you count Booking.com as European, one late designation doesn't change the fact the law was targeted at American companies.)
In other words, the Booking.com designation demonstrates the Commission can regulate European companies. But it absolutely doesn't prove the initial framework design was neutral. Which it couldn't do, because it wasn't. The DMA could have been amended to add music streaming as a CPS. The Commission has chosen not to. I wonder why that is?
There’s a limit to that. Apple made a profit in one year in India of roughly $300 million after taxes. India wants to fine them $38 billion, well over a century worth of profits. Apple would sooner declare bankruptcy and shut down operations than pay such a fine. And for what? An arbitrary decision that Apple is doing a no-no when their market share is practically negligible? What kind of anti-competitive behavior gets you a 9% market share when the other guy has 91%? If you’re serious about anti-trust, you go after the guy with the giant market share, not the guy without it. Yes, let’s increase that 91% to 100% instead because we’ve driven the 9% to bankruptcy.
They did. It’s called full screen versus windowed mode.
Not true at all. I believe all consumers should have products that they can do what they want with a large monopolistic anticompetitive company shouldn’t control it all to make one percent wealthier and everyone else gets the shaft.
Actually, it’s meant to target consumers in the EU by ensuring free market competition prevails not anticompetitive markets controlled by a few companies.
This hasn't anything to do with the EU, but as usual, you do you! 🤣
No, it’s not. Not at all. Otherwise they wouldn’t have corruptly exempted Spotify and raised the thresholds before passage to ensure most EU companies aren’t hit. If it was true my about consumers then they wouldn’t have done that.
At its most charitable reading it is targeted to make things better for developers. Which will make things worse for consumers.
But it’s really about Europe being unable to admit its regulations are why innovation has died on the continent, so US firms must be brought down to their level.
A company can innovate and not be a big anticompetitive bully. Apple did it with the iPhone. The current environment and economic conditions are set for everyone to fail as the bottom 99% aren’t going to take it forever.
Not just the original iPhone, also the Macintosh II, the 1984 Mac, iPod and the iPad. Apple used to bring us great products. But the Apple many of us loved years ago is no more, it's just a giant profit machine now, totally fixated on 40%+ margins and obscene Executive "rewards".
In that regard, it's not much different from the likes of Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and the rest of them. Huge profits, even greater power over the lives of billions of people. As you say "the bottom 99% aren’t going to take it forever."
Perhaps the solution is for Apple to stop using foreign countries to build their stuff and do it all in the US. And pull out of any markets that they think are trying to punish them.