Apple Gets EU Warning to Open iOS to Third-Party Connected Devices

[I7guy]

What?!

Apple's iOS App Store is installed on 100% of iPhones.

But only on 27% of the universe of smartphone owners. Because the other 73% has other operating systems.

It's not. It's share transaction volume (transactions times amount).
The markets don't care much about issued but unused cards.

What? Market share is determined by transaction volume, value, number of cards, penetration and geography. Where volume, number of cards, penetration and geography are based on units.

Exactly. Another factor why Apple isn't a small minority player.

No, that makes them profitable not dominant.

Of course they are allowed to develop differentiating features!


No. Interoperability doesn't mean letting others have the same feature.

Example:
Apple is free to develop (or license) the best speech recognition engine in the industry and the most intelligent digital voice assistant feature. They don't have to give that tech to anyone else and can use it to differentiate their iPhones over the competition. They don't have to let any Android developer or competing smartphone manufacturer have that feature.

But they can't weaponise that feature to make their own music streaming technology or service the only one that works with. When you can control the playback or volume with a button, they can't use that to preference their own music server over others.

Ensuring interoperability does not mean giving IP for free to others.

Ensuring interoperability is a synonym for regulations requiring apple open up everything. Turning it into android.

 

[tmaciak]

They just are being forbidden to withhold features from competitors that they themselves use freely in order to be better.

So, let's presume, that company "S" wants to develop some new feature, like new protocol for connection between music service they are offering and mobile speakers they quite recently released. But to develop this feature, they need to spend like 10 mln SEK. But they also quite recently were nominated as "gatekeeper", so they knew, that they will need to share this new protocol with everybody, and there is a serious risk, that it will be copied and implemented in cheap speakers mass produced in China by some no name manufacturers, and they will be not able to sell enough speakers to cover R&D costs.

As CEO of such company, would you spend those money to innovate and develop better protocol without guarantee that you will be able to recover costs, or rather keep to current protocol, which is maybe worse, but still allows to gain on selling speakers and doesn't need risky investment in R&D?

 

[AppliedMicro]

But only on 27% of the universe of smartphone owners. Because the other 73% has other operating systems.

...and yet they account for about half of consumer mobile app spending.
Non-paying users are irrelevant to app developers (the ones being given rights by the legislation).

What? Market share is determined by transaction volume, value, number of cards, penetration and geography. Where volume, number of cards, penetration and geography are based on units.

Market share for credit cards is usually measured in share of the overall transaction volume.
It's reasonable to do the same for Apple's App Store/In-app purchasing service.

Also, consumers can easily switch between different payment cards and carry multiple ones at the same time - they don't usually do for their personal smartphone. There's a lock-in effect on smartphones due to high initial purchasing cost vs. credit cards. Signing up for a credit card usually does not cost hundreds of Euros.

 

[surferfb]

Also, consumers can easily switch between different payment cards and carry multiple ones at the same time - they don't usually do for their personal smartphone. There's a lock-in effect on smartphones due to high initial purchasing cost vs. credit cards. Signing up for a credit card usually does not cost hundreds of Euros.

Again, it is not difficult or expensive to switch smartphone providers. Next time you need a new phone, buy an offering from another company. Done!

 

[AppliedMicro]

In what upside down world are we living in is “not giving competitors access to our property” considered “artificially limiting its competiors”. Is Coca-Cola not giving Pepsi the formula to Coke “artificially limiting its competitors?”

Anyone can easily get into the business of selling carbonated soft drinks.
Soft drinks aren't a platform service.

Again, it is not difficult or expensive to switch smartphone providers. Next time you need a new phone, buy an offering from another company. Done!

It is relatively difficult and expensive.

Consumers can easily and cheaply switch between payment cards on a day-to-day basis or even on every individual transaction. Even my mother does. They can't and don't for their phones.

"This store/restaurant does not take card scheme X.
No problem, I'm just going to use my Y card for that transaction then".

"My colleague showed me this cool sports/whatever app, but it doesn't run on the iOS phone I'm happy with.
Seems I'll quickly have to grab an Android phone over my lunch break then."
👉 Said no one ever.

It surely is neither impossible nor prohibitively expensive to switch smartphone operating systems every couple of years.
But it's relatively tedious and not normal to do it day-to-day. Such as when an app is less expensive on Android then on iOS.

 

[surferfb]

Anyone can easily get into the business of selling carbonated soft drinks.
Soft drinks aren't a platform service.

Anyone can get into the business of making smartphones and connected devices. One of the major platforms will even give you an OS for free if you don’t want to build your own. You don’t have to freeload off of Apple to compete.

It is relatively difficult and expensive.

Consumers can easily and cheaply switch between payment cards on a day-to-day basis or even on every individual transaction. Even my mother does.

They can't and don't for their phones.

I don’t feel locked into my current car brand because I spent tens of thousands of dollars when I bought my current car - in fact I’m almost certainly not getting another one from the brand.

 

[AppliedMicro]

I don’t feel locked into my current car brand because I spent tens of thousands of dollars when I bought my current car - in fact I’m almost certainly not getting another one from the brand.

...any yet you stick.

Normal people buy a smartphone (or car) and stick with it for a few months or years - during which time they remain "softly" locked into the platform.

It prevents them from "shopping around" on apps or accessories.
The Google Play Store isn't competing with the Apple App Store on a day-to-day basis.

 

[surferfb]

...any yet you stick.

Normal people buy a smartphone (or car) and stick with it for a few months or years - during which time they remain "softly" locked into the platform.

It prevents them from "shopping around" on apps or accessories.
The Google Play Store isn't competing with the Apple App Store on a day-to-day basis.

And if you’re unhappy with your platform then you don’t further lock yourself in. I’m not going out and buying accessories for my car now that we’ve decided we’re likely going a different direction with next one.

I mean if you really cared about this you’d demand the EU mandate interoperability in apps between iOS and Android. All iOS apps must run on Android and all Android apps must run on iOS. Electron apps for everyone!

Because even in the world where you’re right and I’m wrong, and the DMA works exactly as expected and there are no negative consequences whatsoever, and for the first time ever the EU regulates tech without making the problem worse, people are still locked in to whatever platform they choose and won’t be able to compete on a day-to-day basis.

 

[AppliedMicro]

I don’t feel locked into my current car brand because I spent tens of thousands of dollars when I bought my current car - in fact I’m almost certainly not getting another one from the brand.

I basically have to buy one phone and choose one operating system out of the the dominant two.
It's not as if I got as much as choice as there is for cars.

I mean if you really cared about this you’d demand the EU mandate interoperability in apps between iOS and Android. All iOS apps must run on Android and all Android apps must run on iOS. Electron apps for everyone!

That doesn't prevent operating system developers from preferencing their own apps or services.

even in the world where you’re right and I’m wrong, and the DMA works exactly as expected and there are no negative consequences whatsoever

There will be negative consequences with the DMA - no question about that.

people are still locked in to whatever platform they choose and won’t be able to compete on a day-to-day basis

It cures or mitigates the symptoms - when the root cause can't, isn't worth (or not even desirable to many) to be cured.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Hilarious amounts of strawman, whataboutisms and scare tactics by the Apple heavies in this thread. I can't be bothered to keep repeating the obvious over and over again so I'll wish you all a good night. I'll just say that I hope you all get over the inevitable precedent these rulings will create, world wide. One person's lemons are someone else's lemonade.

 

[weckart]

Well, yeah.
Because Apple is a company, not a human being.

Not that it matters but in the US companies are legally "persons" and enjoy protection under the 14th Amendment. Give it time and a bit of AI and they might go the whole hog some time in the future.

And again, Apple has 27% OF THE MARKET IN THE EU. Not a Monopolist. Not even close. How on Earth anyone thinks its appropriate for the government to stick their thumb on the scale to make a minority competitor in a market act like the one with over 70% of the market I will never understand.

It's because you are assuming that the way that US law regards entities as monopolies applies the world over. In the UK, 25% of the market is enough to have you deemed a monopoly power under the law with all that entails.

In the EU, it's less straightforward. Usually a market share of under 40% would not be considered as holding dominant power but the EU also takes other criteria into consideration. Market share alone is not the determiner.

Under Article 102 there is this:
"The Commission also takes other factors into account in its assessment of dominance, including the ease with which other companies can enter the market – whether there are any barriers to this; the existence of countervailing buyer power; the overall size and strength of the company and its resources and the extent to which it is present at several levels of the supply chain (vertical integration)."

Note my bold text. Apple isn't a minnow in the world market and we all remember how it used its world market strength to get early access to Intel goodies when they were BFF. It may have 27% of the entire EU market when taken as a whole (although clearly much higher in certain countries within the EU) but its ability to disrupt the market is not in doubt.

I'm sitting this one out. This whole thread is more feelings than actual substance. Carry on, people. Especially the ones who keep insisting that Apple should take its ball away and refuse to play any more because that is exactly how multinationals earning billions in profit yearly out of that market will react. You people are the funnest.

 

[I7guy]

...and yet they account for about half of consumer mobile app spending.

Apple doesn't set the prices so you are saying, the devs charge triple what the competition does? Spending, revenue, profits etc was the threaded needle the EU use.

Non-paying users are irrelevant to app developers (the ones being given rights by the legislation).

Of course, it's a convenient omissions.

Market share for credit cards is usually measured in share of the overall transaction volume.

You can look it up.

It's reasonable to do the same for Apple's App Store/In-app purchasing service.

Also, consumers can easily switch between different payment cards and carry multiple ones at the same time - they don't usually do for their personal smartphone. There's a lock-in effect on smartphones due to high initial purchasing cost vs. credit cards. Signing up for a credit card usually does not cost hundreds of Euros.

Switching many things in life is not easy. Take cars, buy a high-end car and put thousands of custom mods into it. You want to switch cars, good luck in having those mods bolt-on seamlessly. You talk about lock-in as if it's a real thing.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Apple doesn't set the prices so you are saying

They clearly set their commission pricing on the App Store/In-app purchases.
And it's not normal to stay unchanged over 15 year in competitive markets with huge economies of scale.
Furthermore, Google as the other duopoly operator of App Store has virtually the same pricing.

You can look it up.

Rest assured that I did.
It's share purchase volume or outstanding balance.
Not cards.

(note: I didn’t say no one ever expressed it as share of issued cards. But a share of monetary “money” is the prevalent measure)

You can look it up, too.
There's currently an ongoing merger attempt between Capital One and Discover in the U.S.

By the way, the U.S. department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have recently issued merger guidelines providing for that would "raise a presumption of illegality when they significantly increase ioncentration in a highly concentrated market".

And it starts at just 30% market share for a merged firm. As a second factor, they use the so-called Herfindahl–Hirschman index as a means of measuring market concentration.

Now, Apple and Google or their operating systems or App Stores obviously won't be attempting to merge - and "growing" into a duopoly isn't illegal. But if you calculate that for mobile operating systems or application stores, the resulting scores of 5'000 or higher would be well into anti-competitive territory.

(And just to yet again pre-empt the inevitable looming distraction with smartphone unit sales: sales of smartphones as hardware devices are neither as concentrated, nor are they're really relevant for distribution of software and services to smartphone consumers. Because developers of apps or streaming services do not target individual smartphone manufacturers' models. They're target one or both of the two dominant operating systems and stores)

So yeah, you guy can stuff it with your claims how Apple is (supposedly) just a small minority operator and their market share would never warrant regulation. Or that it's only the E.U. that's out to "get" American tech companies.

 

[surferfb]

It's because you are assuming that the way that US law regards entities as monopolies applies the world over. In the UK, 25% of the market is enough to have you deemed a monopoly power under the law with all that entails.

In the EU, it's less straightforward. Usually a market share of under 40% would not be considered as holding dominant power but the EU also takes other criteria into consideration. Market share alone is not the determiner.

Under Article 102 there is this:
"The Commission also takes other factors into account in its assessment of dominance, including the ease with which other companies can enter the market – whether there are any barriers to this; the existence of countervailing buyer power; the overall size and strength of the company and its resources and the extent to which it is present at several levels of the supply chain (vertical integration)."

Note my bold text. Apple isn't a minnow in the world market and we all remember how it used its world market strength to get early access to Intel goodies when they were BFF. It may have 27% of the entire EU market when taken as a whole (although clearly much higher in certain countries within the EU) but its ability to disrupt the market is not in doubt.

No, I understand that all very well. But that still doesn’t make it 1) a good idea 2) appropriate 3) fair or 4) in the EU’s interests.

Maybe the reason why the EU can’t compete in the tech world is in large part because it does stupid things like regulate a market participant with 27% of the market like they’ve got 70% market share.

Here’s some quotes from the recently released Draghi report. If you actually read the report sections about tech and innovation, you’ll notice the report specifically calls out regulations that result in “dictating specific business practices” as a reason the EU is falling behind and suggests they follow the US approach instead.

About EU regulations in general:

the EU’s regulatory stance towards tech companies hampers innovation

About the DMA and DSA:

While it is early to fully gauge the impact of these landmarks regulations, their implementation must avoid producing administrative and compliance burdens and legal uncertainties

On AI

[EU regulations] create the risk of European companies being excluded from early AI innovations because of uncertainty of regulatory frameworks as well as higher burdens for EU researchers and innovators to develop homegrown AI

Remember, it’s not some crazy American writing this, it’s the former head of the European Central Bank at the behest of the European Commission.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Maybe the reason why the EU can’t compete in the tech world is in large part because it does stupid things like regulate a market participant with 27% of the market like they’ve got 70% market share.

They’ve got about 50% market share in mobile app spending.

And regulation would still make sense for smaller market shares, given how highly concentrated the market is and how anticompetitive the two dominant firms act.

A firm with minority market share that happily sits in their highly profitable niche and colludes with the dominant firm (on commission pricing and similar „store“ terms) does not make for a competitive or contestable market.

A second operating system does - and it needs to be reasonably open and interoperable to be a viable competition to the dominant Android OS (for third-party developers).

 

[Abazigal]

So, let's presume, that company "S" wants to develop some new feature, like new protocol for connection between music service they are offering and mobile speakers they quite recently released. But to develop this feature, they need to spend like 10 mln SEK. But they also quite recently were nominated as "gatekeeper", so they knew, that they will need to share this new protocol with everybody, and there is a serious risk, that it will be copied and implemented in cheap speakers mass produced in China by some no name manufacturers, and they will be not able to sell enough speakers to cover R&D costs.

As CEO of such company, would you spend those money to innovate and develop better protocol without guarantee that you will be able to recover costs, or rather keep to current protocol, which is maybe worse, but still allows to gain on selling speakers and doesn't need risky investment in R&D?

That may be one of the unspoken downsides to the DMA that supporters of it are unwilling to acknowledge.

In an ideal world, you get Apple tanking all the costs of running the App Store, of developing new APIs, and then making them freely accessible to the rest of the world at no extra charge. But ask yourself - if you were in Apple's shoes, and after having spent decades painstakingly building up your ecosystem from scratch and fending off other competitors such as Blackberry, Microsoft, Android and Nokia, and now that you are finally in a position to enjoy the fruits of your labour, you are now being asked to open up your ecosystem (the unique selling point of your business model) and make it equally accessible to everyone else for free.

But again, the question is - ideal for whom?

It's not like Apple can treat their APIs like FRAND patents and license it to third parties. No. Whatever they develop, they are expected to invest the added time and effort to create APIs for third parties while also ensuring that these APIs are secure and robust enough that they do not get abused. For free.

And the assumption is that Apple is rich enough that they would automatically be happy and willing to do all this for free.

In the real world, Apple might do this for certain features if they deem it vital enough to their long term product roadmap. However, when it comes to certain smaller, less consequential features, I am see Apple deciding that it's simply not worth the time and effort to develop it. This means either fewer features for everybody (because Apple decided not to go ahead with it), or fewer features for people in the EU (because Apple feels it's not worth their time to make it DMA-compliant).

The EU possibly had an ideal scenario in mind when they crafted the DMA. And I can tell you as a teacher, there are days when I plan my lesson with a specific purpose in mind, and then things go south and the lesson didn't go the way I envisioned, and I can only blame myself for mistaken assumptions. Simply because you are dealing with people, who are under no compunction to behave the way you expect them to just because.

I guess all I can say is - we will see how the DMA unfolds, and don't be surprised if and when it does not progress quite the way you all imagined. Right now, it seems like the users in the EU have the better end of the deal. They get third party app stores and the ability to swap app defaults (something that benefits any iPhone capable of running iOS 18). Meanwhile, AI isn't available anywhere else in the world (and people like myself can't get it on older iPhones anyways) and maybe the only drawback is not being able to access iPhone mirroring (which again, only impacts iPhone users who also use a Mac).

In the near term, 1 point to the DMA? But in the medium and long term, we will see if Apple does wind up capitulating or if more and more features just end up being withheld from iOS devices in the EU. If that happens, don't complain. We have each made our beds.

 

[I7guy]

They clearly set their commission pricing on the App Store/In-app purchases.

Only the commission not the sale price. As there is no case law against the app store what apple does is legal.

And it's not normal to stay unchanged over 15 year in competitive markets with huge economies of scale.

Yes it is.

Furthermore, Google as the other duopoly operator of App Store has virtually the same pricing.

There are other stores that have the same pricing as well.

Rest assured that I did.
It's share purchase volume or outstanding balance.
Not cards.

There are multiple factors that go into determining concentration. I posted 5 factors above, one are cardholders a few others are correlated to the number of cardholders.

(note: I didn’t say no one ever expressed it as share of issued cards. But a share of monetary “money” is the prevalent measure)

You can look it up, too.
There's currently an ongoing merger attempt between Capital One and Discover in the U.S.

By the way, the U.S. department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have recently issued merger guidelines providing for that would "raise a presumption of illegality when they significantly increase ioncentration in a highly concentrated market".

And it starts at just 30% market share for a merged firm. As a second factor, they use the so-called Herfindahl–Hirschman index as a means of measuring market concentration.

Now, Apple and Google or their operating systems or App Stores obviously won't be attempting to merge - and "growing" into a duopoly isn't illegal. But if you calculate that for mobile operating systems or application stores, the resulting scores of 5'000 or higher would be well into anti-competitive territory.

(And just to yet again pre-empt the inevitable looming distraction with smartphone unit sales: sales of smartphones as hardware devices are neither as concentrated, nor are they're really relevant for distribution of software and services to smartphone consumers. Because developers of apps or streaming services do not target individual smartphone manufacturers' models. They're target one or both of the two dominant operating systems and stores)

So yeah, you guy can stuff it with your claims how Apple is (supposedly) just a small minority operator and their market share would never warrant regulation. Or that it's only the E.U. that's out to "get" American tech companies.

The DOJ tried to stop the Time Warner AOL merger. It lost the case. Full stop. You can look it up. All that is happening at this point is trying to prove the other wrong with opinions. Those who are citing the DMA as justification are engaging in circular reasoning because there is no case law behind the justification of illegal monopoly or duopoly.

 

[I7guy]

They’ve got about 50% market share in mobile app spending.

Which is part of the reason apple was target. Apple customers love to spend. Apple is popular and that popularity is being challenged by these idiotic regulations.

And regulation would still make sense for smaller market shares, given how highly concentrated the market is and how anticompetitive the two dominant firms act.

There aren't two dominant firms. The mobile market is very vibrant with hundreds of players.

A firm with minority market share that happily sits in their highly profitable niche and colludes with the dominant firm (on commission pricing and similar „store“ terms) does not make for a competitive or contestable market.

The market is extremely competitive. Your definition is not backed by any case law.

A second operating system does - and it needs to be reasonably open and interoperable to be a viable competition to the dominant Android OS (for third-party developers).

So let the EU start a go-fund me page. All that is needed is expertise, time, people and money. Simple right? No legalities in the way.

 

[surferfb]

They’ve got about 50% market share in mobile app spending.

In large part because their business model makes it virtually impossible to do things like pirate apps or download malware.

And as it’s been previously pointed out - Apple doesn’t set the prices that lead to that spending. Maybe the EU should investigate developers for colluding to artificially raise prices on iOS users.

And regulation would still make sense for smaller market shares, given how highly concentrated the market is and how anticompetitive the two dominant firms act.

A firm with minority market share that happily sits in their highly profitable niche and colludes with the dominant firm (on commission pricing and similar „store“ terms) does not make for a competitive or contestable market.

Citation please that Apple is colluding with Google on prices. Because if they were proven to be, that would be grounds for anti-trust enforcement. But seeing as how no government has accused them of that; I’m assuming you’re just making that up.

A second operating system does - and it needs to be reasonably open and interoperable to be a viable competition to the dominant Android OS (for third-party developers).

Not when the first operating system is open and interoperable; it doesn’t.

 

[AppliedMicro]

In an ideal world, you get Apple tanking all the costs of running the App Store, of developing new APIs, and then making them freely accessible to the rest of the world at no extra charge. But ask yourself - if you were in Apple's shoes, and after having spent decades painstakingly building up your ecosystem from scratch and fending off other competitors such as Blackberry, Microsoft, Android and Nokia, and now that you are finally in a position to enjoy the fruits of your labour, you are now being asked to open up your ecosystem (the unique selling point of your business model) and make it equally accessible to everyone else for free.

Apple monetises their development of iOS through hardware sales - and their costs of running the App Store through commissions on sales. There‘s zero need for them to be the only possible seller to consumers.

And that comment about „finally in the position to enjoy the fruits of their labour“ is about a decade behind the time. They’ve already benefitted so much from them for many years to become the most valuable company in the world. Having pity for them is unwarranted.

It's not like Apple can treat their APIs like FRAND patents and license it to third parties. No. Whatever they develop, they are expected to invest the added time and effort to create APIs for third parties while also ensuring that these APIs are secure and robust enough that they do not get abused. For free.

No - they monetise it through device sales.
And their own subscriptions.
There‘s nothing preventing them from charging consumers for features.

I am see Apple deciding that it's simply not worth the time and effort to develop it

They better should. Cause smartphones are competitive markets, and Android is a strong competitor.
The ones suffering from lack of competition are third-party developers.

we will see if Apple does wind up capitulating or if more and more features just end up being withheld from iOS devices in the EU

We will see.

 

[I7guy]

Apple monetises their development of iOS through hardware sales - and their costs of running the App Store through commissions on sales.

And the cost of buying the app.

There‘s zero need for them to be the only possible seller to consumers.

The apple ios app store is an apple product. There has been no case law for a finding against apple anywhere. The DMA is a craftily worded document designed to disenfrachise apple.

And that comment about „finally in the position to enjoy the fruits of their labour“ is about a decade behind the time. They’ve already benefitted so much from them for many years to become the most valuable company in the world.

They are entitled to their own success. "Think Different".

Having pity for them is unwarranted.


No - they monetise it through device sales.
And their own subscriptions.
There‘s nothing preventing them from charging consumers for features.


They better should. Cause smartphones are competitive markets, and Android is a strong competitor.

Let the entirety of the EU use android and let us know here at MR how that turns out.

The ones suffering from lack of competition are third-party developers.

No they aren't.

We will see.

Yes we will.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Only the commission not the sale price.

Of course. The App Store is a commission-based business.
And neither do payment card companies pr processors dictate the sales prices for merchants.

As there is no case law against the app store what apple does is legal.

Never said it was.
Apple is free to set up whatever price they desire.
As (I believe) you said yourself: a duopoly or monopoly isn‘t illegal per se.

There are other stores that have the same pricing as well.

…and they’re mostly a technologically enforced monopoly on their respective platform (except Steam).

There are multiple factors that go into determining concentration. I posted 5 factors above, one are cardholders a few others are correlated to the number of cardholders.

These are not used by antitrust regulators. They don‘t particularly care about unused cards.

Which is part of the reason apple was target. Apple customers love to spend. Apple is popular and that popularity is being challenged by these idiotic regulations.

Exactly 👍🏻

Which is why they‘re not a small minority player.

There aren't two dominant firms. The mobile market is very vibrant with hundreds of players.

Exactly.

Mobiles as in hardware devices.
But not mobile operating systems or distribution of apps for them.

The market is extremely competitive.

It isn‘t for operating systems and application stores.

You will never cease with these attempts at distracting, will you?

Your definition is not backed by any case law.

Neither will you stop with your asking for case law.
It doesn’t require case law to conclude that smartphone operating systems exist in a duopoly.
Common sense and observation is enough.

So let the EU start a go-fund me page. All that is needed is expertise, time, people and money. Simple right? No legalities in the way.

…and an app ecosystem. Which can‘t be created out of nowhere.
And that is the key point.

 

[AppliedMicro]

And the cost of buying the app.

Yes. Exactly. Costs of buying apps from their App Store.

The DMA is a craftily worded document designed to disenfrachise apple.

It‘s not about Apple.
Saying it’s only about Apple would be paranoia mixed with Stockholm syndrom.

It‘s about fair competition in digital markets - of which Apple happens to be one of the biggest threads worldwide.

They are entitled to their own success

…and they‘ve had it, becoming the world‘s most valuable company.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Citation please that Apple is colluding with Google on prices. Because if they were proven to be, that would be grounds for anti-trust enforcement. But seeing as how no government has accused them of that; I’m assuming you’re just making that up.

The similarity of commission rates and terms (prohibiting external transactions on digital sales in/from apps) is obviously observable. I believe it‘s of course only tacit collusion, not an explicit agreement.

Regardless, there‘s been no competitive pressure whatsoever on store commission pricing over thr last 15 years, despite sales (and economies of scale) increasing …it don‘t know, maybe thousandfold?

Not when the first operating system is open and interoperable; it doesn’t.

A viable competition to that „first“ system needs to be open and interoperable itself.
At least from the perspective of third-party business that want to compete fairly.

 

[I7guy]

Of course. The App Store is a commission-based business.
And neither do payment card companies pr processors dictate the sales prices for merchants.


Never said it was.
Apple is free to set up whatever price they desire.
As (I believe) you said yourself: a duopoly or monopoly isn‘t illegal per se.


…and they’re mostly a technologically enforced monopoly on their respective platform (except Steam).

Incorrect. Physical stores had a commission of 30%.

These are not used by antitrust regulators. They don‘t particularly care about unused cards.


Exactly 👍🏻

Which is why they‘re not a small minority player.

They are a minority. Having customers that spend money doesn’t make them a majority. See Ferrari for an example.

Exactly.

Mobiles as in hardware devices.
But not mobile operating systems or distribution of apps for them.


It isn‘t for operating systems and application stores.

You will never cease with these attempts at distracting, will you?


Neither will you stop with your asking for case law.
It doesn’t require case law to conclude that smartphone operating systems exist in a duopoly.
Common sense and observation is enough.


…and an app ecosystem. Which can‘t be created out of nowhere.
And that is the key point.

Justifying the dma and justifying personal opinions using the dma is mostly circular reasoning . Hence the requirement for some case law anywhere.