Always, always it’s amazing how discussions on such forums end up 😂
You’re arguing over a businesses legal issues 😆
You’re arguing over a businesses legal issues 😆
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Apple Intelligence Features Not Coming to European Union at Launch Due to DMA
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I don’t want to sign up for accounts with every app I have. I don’t want to give them my credit card info. I have had unauthorized charges and having to re-set up automatic payments is so frustrating.
Apple’s system is 100% better for the vast majority users. But a loud minority of (mostly) nerdy power users are working with a government hell-bent on taking US companies down a peg to make the experience worse for the many for the benefit of the few.
Yes. The EU had to make up a new standard to take the US tech companies down a peg because they knew monopoly wouldn’t fly.
Amazing coincidence that no European companies meet the gatekeeper definition, isn’t it.
The EU Commission is most certainly not listening or bothered by the needs of nerdy power users, I can assure you of that. They are primarily concerned with app publishers that do business inside the EU on Apple's and Google's platforms.
Ok. Point taken. A bunch of big businesses and a few nerdy power users who could just as easily write software for Android if they hate Apple’s rules so much. But they feel entitled to access Apple’s customers without paying Apple for access to the tools and services they use to reach Apple’s customers.
Oh, it’s easy to tell the difference, one is requiring changes without a focus on bringing financial ruin to companies in the region, and the other is China.
Apple will only be deemed compliant with the DMA if it adversely affects Apple’s profit.
THAT is the spirit of the law according to Vestager. It remains to be seen if their replacement feels the same.
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McJesus Chicken Fries...
Monopolies take decades of market growth to happen. The point of anti-monopoly laws or anti-trust laws is not to wait decades and decades for a literal monopoly to take effect...
It's to referee markets so that monopolies can never take effect, and to make sure the idea of "perfect competition" is always possible because that is what is best for the economy and for a country's citizens.
So once any company does anything anti-competitive, that appears to be an abuse of their market power (doesn't need to be 100%), then they are to be investigated under these laws.
Once China invades Taiwan, and we all know it's a matter of time, Apple will be very happy to still have a market in the EU. Of course it will take some years to rebuild those supply chains, but I think they will manage.
What you don’t seem to understand is that many of us don’t think government intervention is appropriate when a competitive market exists. And the fact that Apple has between a 25-30% market share in Europe means there is a competitive market. Android exists and is the market leader in Europe!
Since they own 100% of the iOS market share, Apple has the power to make or break a business by not allowing an app into the App Store. I know it sounds absurd, but that's the logic of the EU.
Oh I understand the “logic”. I just find it patently absurd.
As I said earlier in the thread - it’s like forcing Burger King to set up miniature McDonalds in their restaurants to sell the Big Mac because Burger King has a “monopoly”on Whopper customers. And not letting Burger King take a cut of the Big Mac sales even though Burger King paid for the rent, electricity, water, and trash service.
A market that functions will also have business users choose their way and payment processor in selling to customers. Without having to abandon more than half of the market (in in revenue) - or as you call it "where money than on any other" competing platform is made.
No. Of course not.
👉 I want them to be in control of their own apps
(and yes, that includes the words, links and payment options they can include in them)
You haven't read it - because it clearly does identify them:
- lack of choice and increased dependence of large numbers of both business users and end users
- lock-in effects
- unfair business practices
- lack of competitive contestability
- unfair commerical relationships
I was speaking of Spotify as an example.
I know for a fact that users don't have a problem in trusting Spotify and giving them their payment details.
If you aren't coming across as a trustworthy app, services or business, you may well choose a trusted intermediary (storefront) for your payment/transaction processing needs.
As I said earlier:
"McDonald's isn't Apple, their restaurants aren't iOS, their ordering desks aren't App Stores and their hamburgers aren't mobile applications."
The comparison is preposterous.
👉 All of the comparisons I've read (in similar threads) between mobile operating systems/applications and whatever brick-and-mortar stores or restaurants have been inane. They, without exception, always failed completely at recognising vastly different market power, market concentration, entry barriers and lack of competition in the relevant digital software markets.
These are alleged harms. These have not been shown to be actual harms. Nor have they been shown to ultimately have the harmful effects they are supposed to have.
But even more importantly, the DMA does not have a measurement tool to track its progress. It's built upon the unproven assumptions with no way to measure the results. It's built on a sort of utopian idealism of how business should work. Not how business actually works.
The DMA is not based in a factual or rational basis of economics. It's built on utopian ideals that have never been shown to produce anything.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s a bad analogy.
But fine. Here’s another one that is closer.
It’s like the EU is forcing Microsoft to let Sony sell PlayStation games that run on the Xbox, without compensating Microsoft for any of the Microsoft-created development tools and services Sony used to port the games to Xbox, despite the fact that Microsoft sold 13% of consoles in Europe in 2023 and Sony sold 57%.
Apple is estimated to command a majority (more than 50%) of revenue in the EU.
Oh... now it's "nerdy power users" that are responsible for the DMA? 🤣🤣🤣
Well, it's at least a departure from the old "only a few whining Spotify and Epic crybaby wannabe 'freeloaders'"
Monopolies are not based on revenue, but rather on Market share. BTW, can you provide me link for that 50% figure?
They work for the same reason the App Store does, the EU approved it. It is unclear if these were announced today that the integration required for them to work would be allowed in the EU.
There's no question that monopoly in the true, original (economic) sense of the word means "just one" - we can agree on that.
And there's also no question that the legal definition (which you were specifically referring to!) has broadened that to include similar conditions of market power. Such as shared by the U.S. antitrust regulator as well.
I believe the bickering about the term isn't helpful. If anything, it should rather be spend debating on whether and how to regulate companies with such market power (whether they're a literal economic monopoly or not - bust just similar).
See my reply to your posting three days ago here.
Apple should just release a stripped down dumb phone for EU users, and leave the good stuff to everyone else.
My favorite thing about these arguments is how people are literally arguing that Apple should cater to developers at their own expense.
Imagine spending years of time, money, and other resources developing something. Imagine that a government comes along and tells you that you must lose money by letting them have the same level of control you do. Remember, this is a thing you made. You developed.
So people are telling us that it’s shocking that Apple has rules that favor themselves, on the platform they built. On the platform they spent years developing. It’s shocking that Apple didn’t allow 3rd party app stores where they lose money and control over the product… the product they made.
And we are told it’s to increase competition. I’m sorry, who is incapable of competing? How many Android phones are out there? How many ways can I use online services? But but but, iOS is a monopoly on Apple devices I’m told. Lol. Like my PlayStation 5. Like car infotainment systems. But but but, they aren’t indispensable. Lol. The moment these apps are indispensable to you, look in the mirror and figure out why that’s your problem.
It used to be that companies would just compete. Now they don’t. They just whine to regulators to make it to where they don’t have to.
Imagine spending years of time, money, and other resources developing something. Imagine that a government comes along and tells you that you must lose money by letting them have the same level of control you do. Remember, this is a thing you made. You developed.
So people are telling us that it’s shocking that Apple has rules that favor themselves, on the platform they built. On the platform they spent years developing. It’s shocking that Apple didn’t allow 3rd party app stores where they lose money and control over the product… the product they made.
And we are told it’s to increase competition. I’m sorry, who is incapable of competing? How many Android phones are out there? How many ways can I use online services? But but but, iOS is a monopoly on Apple devices I’m told. Lol. Like my PlayStation 5. Like car infotainment systems. But but but, they aren’t indispensable. Lol. The moment these apps are indispensable to you, look in the mirror and figure out why that’s your problem.
It used to be that companies would just compete. Now they don’t. They just whine to regulators to make it to where they don’t have to.
Another armchair quarterback suggesting how Apple can best shoot itself in the foot.
…and within 10 years becoming the most profitable company in the world. They were handsomely compensate.
Who said that it’s shocking? 🤔
American companies ruthlessly exploiting their property and favouring their own services isn‘t shocking at all.
It’s just nothing governments shouldn’t let stand unregulated and letting continue after more than a decade, given how important these platforms have become.
It’s not about competition with or between phones.
It’s about third party developers/services being able to fairly compete on the two dominant software platforms.
Apple allowing or even offering Android on iOS doesn’t change anything at all.
It’s not about that the OS phones come with.
It’s not about that either.
Services like Spotify being useable on desktop PCs doesn’t isn’t important.
Mobile phones are arguably the most important platform on which there are used (and should be able to compete fairly) - and the DMA acknowledges that.
No one else can compete.
Not in the EU, not in Japan, the UK or the U.S.
Microsoft failed, BlackBerry failed.
The market positions are entrenched - just as Windows’s position is for desktop OS.
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