It’s also for the courts to decide if it is. You have voiced your opinion over this matter contrary in favor of their right to do whatever they want not to mentioned justified. So allow same leeway for others to present the contrary opinion.
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Epic Games Asks Court to Allow Fortnite Back on the App Store
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It’s also for the courts to decide if it is. You have voiced your opinion over this matter contrary in favor of their right to do whatever they want not to mentioned justified. So allow same leeway for others to present the contrary opinion.
It’s a fact the courts haven’t found the App Store to be a monopoly. It’s an opinion of some of the posters on this forum it is. It’s also an opinion the 30% is “obscene”.
Within those parameters there’s lots of leeway for varied opinions.
One of the biggest problems I have is people stating opinion as fact with no actual legal justification as to why they feel their opinion is valid.
Many of us here have quoted legal judgements as to why we feel Apple is in the legal right - and most of the time those judgements have been ignored by those supporting Epic and/or the breakup if the app store.
In fact, one of the cries is to reduce the rates on the app store: this despite the fact that such an action could then be used in an antitrust investigation.
Not sure many people grasp this fact: whilst Apple keep the status quo they are pretty much protected in any antitrust investigation.
Dropping the prices cauld be seen as predatory. That then means that Apple may only have Trinko to hold back being penalized.
Yeah, keep rolling those eyes up. You might catch the joke going over your head 😄
So because you’ve purchased some Apple products, that should give you the right to compel Apple to work for you and use their own resources without any further compensation? 😳
I’m a socialist (well, a social democrat, really), and even I find that bonkers!
Your forgetting the underlying theme of the issue here, that the issue is currently going through the court process, therefore when people are talking about anti-trust and monoply, they are not talking as fact, they are talking about legal issues that could form part of the legal process used by both Apple and Epic. Yes I can say Apple applies a 'monopolistic' approach to it's app store but that does not mean I am talking of facts, I am using it in the context that a lawyer will use such an argument when in court, with the court deciding if it's baseless or not.
At the end of the day, courts and governments around the world will decide who is right and who is wrong.
The courts have not yet pronounced either either way. Apple is not being investigated to be found guilty of being a monopoly or not. That would be silly considering that being a monopoly is not against the law. What Apple is being investigated is over possible anti competitive practices in the digital service marketplace, not so much in the smartphone marketplace. There is a diference between being a “Monopoly” and being “Monopolistic”. One can be one without the other.
I just dipped in this thread because some statements were false as a matter of fact, as for example the current App Store policies for in-app payments and hacking / jail breaking being offered as good examples of freedom of choice.
To date, as some have said as much, the ios app store is not a monopoly.
Yes, monopolistic is being thrown around also. It doesn't seem like the ios app store is even that as there are other app stores.
Always good to have some straight talk injected into the hubris.
Please be careful with your choice of words as it can lead to distorting the debate/discussion. There is no other 'IOS' app store but there is however an app store from a competitior which happens to be a completly different operating system.
Please make sure you make the distinction clear so as not to distort the debate/discussion. Thank you.
If you speaking in technical terms the App Store holds by definition a Monopoly over digital services in iOS. It’s the sole supplier of app and digital services, there can be no other. There is no competition for this service.
Customers cannot change the supplier without changing devices on one hand. It’s not ideal but ok it’s feasible with no considerable harm.
On the other hand digital businesses not using the App Store if they find unfavorable conditions means leaving behind one in two Americans as their customer on smartphones. It’s an incredible power.
Now the case is wether this restricts or not the choices of Customers in harming ways. By Customers we meant any person or organization that uses App Store services. That includes buyers of goods (say regular iPhone users) and suppliers of goods (example digital services and App producers).
This is the easiest and most common form of a Monopoly driven by vertical integration.
If you take the fluff out this is what is being investigated.
As I’ve said, being a Monopoly is not illegal. The Monopolies to watch out are driven by horizontal integration ... aka buying the competition off or holding a large number of shares across companies in the same industry.
Finally a Company or Service does not need to be a state of Perfect Monopoly to be a Monopoly. These are extremely rare cases usually reserved to Govs.
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Yep, it's not illegal for a company to have a monopoly with it's own product.
Customers also can't do a bunch of stuff they might want to do with an iphone. This statement is proof apple does not have a monopoly in the smartphone market.
Companies, according to case law posted here, can't have a monopoly in their own products.
Don't think we have to worry about Apple buying android.
It’s a well known fact that you like to distort reality by comparing the incomparable. No one is arguing that users cannot do a bunch of stuff with the iPhone or smartphones in general. Hey having kids with the device is an example ... at least for now. The Apps aren’t theirs and App Store holds a monopoly over their commercialization as far as iOS user go.
We are talking about a practice that leads the cost of bunch of services from 20K a year to 150k for example ... to the App Store customer (thE people or orgs that use the service to sell their digital devices and apps)
Anyway, stop spreading inaccurate information based on assumptions.
I think you will like this article ...
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I'll wait for the decisions that will be coming out of the courts. The old "if it walks like duck, ...etc" may or may not apply.It’s a well known fact that you like to distort reality by comparing the incomparable. I No one is arguing that users cannot to a bunch of stuff with the iPhone or smartphones in general. Hey having kids with the device is an example ... at least for now. We are talking about abortive that leads the cost of bunch of services from 20K a year to 150k for example.
Anyway, stop spreading inaccurate information based on assumptions.
I think you will like this article ...
I agree there is no "competition" for the ios app store within the store and that gives the right for some to call the ios app store monopolistic behavior? Is apple a monopoly unto itself?
Anyway please stop posting opinion masquerading as facts.
It’s a well known fact that you like to distort reality by comparing the incomparable. I No one is arguing that users cannot to a bunch of stuff with the iPhone or smartphones in general. Hey having kids with the device is an example ... at least for now. The Apps aren’t theirs and App Store holds a monopoly over their commercialization as far as iOS user go.
We are talking about a practice that leads the cost of bunch of services from 20K a year to 150k for example ... to the App Store customer (thE people or orgs that use the service to sell their digital devices and apps)
Anyway, stop spreading inaccurate information based on assumptions.
I think you will like this article ...
Not sure what the point of that Medium post was. No one's claiming Apple don't have a monopoly on their infrastructure.
However, that's not necessarily illegal either.
It holds a monopoly over the commercialization of other orgs property on their infrastructure. As I’ve said this is not illegal per si.
What is being under investigation is if the App Store policy is harmful and reduces customer choices. Wether their customer is one that buys apps and subscribes to digital services and or produce apps or provide digital services.
Epic and others have come out as Customers saying that they feel the policy limits their business to the point of being harmful. Some have simply decided to leave their customers behind in iOS given the situation, a choice that is not that good either for them or their customers that bought iOS devices ... one in two Americans according to the stats as far as I read them.
EDIT: I believe that the only way these have a chance is if they manage to provide enough info showing that not being in the App Store is not much of an option to well serve their customer and compete for more customers considering the marketshare Apple has on smartphones ... and considering that digital businesses have no say on what devices customers choose to use. Hence they feel forced to use it at the prices set, even though the underlying services packaged as an App Store are much cheaper elsewhere.
There is a multi lever thing going on here. Typical of vertical integrated services and products.
Apple on the other hand needs to show that it’s precisely the opposite. That in fact the App Store by itself improves these services revenue stream. Don’t think the dialog is much over the Billions that cross the App Store, it can be argued that is just due to concentration and same billions would flow through with other stop gaps and with quality.
It will be a very long battle. It’s the kind of thing that time will tell.
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Then let Epic find another “bank“ to host their games and give them access to millions of people worldwide. I’m not saying I agree with either side, my point is, if you don’t like the contract don’t sign it. It’s not like Epic wasn’t aware of the terms.
I will say a more apt saying is - don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Epic has probably acquired as many users as it can on the iOS platform, and when your user base stops growing, the only other way to increase revenue is to decrease Apple’s cut of IAPs.
So Epic decided to burn their bridges for a few extra bucks and they rightfully deserve whatever repercussions come their way.
Apple today is clearly holding back a lot, partly due to their size and all the scrutiny on them right now. If Steve Jobs were still in charge, I wager Apple’s response would have been a lot swifter and retributive.
Technically they have, because they have ruled plainly and repeatedly that a company cannot have a monopoly over its own products and that definitions of markets that consist of a single company or product are invalid. It’s well established case law.
The real contention is going to be over whether or not iOS/iPadOS/watchOS/tvOS/refrigeratorOS/etc are intrinsically part of their products or not. And whether the app stores as well fall under that definition.
You have to remember, Apple has made great effort to ensure ONLY their products have their OSs and would immediately sue any other company trying to sell computers running OS X not made by Apple. That was actually where one of the precidents relevant to this case comes from. The company tried to claim OS X as a market which it was entitled access (the right to build computers running OS X) and were defeated on the merit’s and the judgment explicitly stated that OS X as a market was incorrect and invalid, as companies CANNOT have a monopoly over their own products and that markets must include suitable alternatives (in the case of OS X, the alternatives were windows and Linux) and that they were competing in the Personal Computing market and NOT the Mac business.
It was also one of the reasons Apple stoped selling their OS on disk despite the license still explicitly forbid use on non Apple machines but people would use the justification that they paid for it so it was fine.
But as it stands, all Apple products run Apple OS’s, and the ONLY products that run Apple OS’s are Apple products. The same is true of the App Store. And ultimately what you are paying for when you buy an Apple product is The hardware, a license to the software and access to the ecosystem. That is their product. And since they cannot have a monopoly over their own product they will not lose.
Nothing they have done can be shown to be anticompetitive. They aren’t abusing their power and changing the system to be more preferential to them because developers are “locked in”. Developers want in knowing full well the fees because it’s so lucrative to them. That 30% cut is built into their business plans. If it was so anti competitive, the number of app factories and successful apps wouldn’t have ballooned as it has.
All of this would be different if they were like Microsoft or Google, and products with their os were being sold by others. But Google and Microsoft both allow sideloading and alternative app stores. At best someone might rule googles pop up warnings (if they repeat continuously or the language is too harsh) as anti-competitive, but that’s about the only point that is winnable.
But Epic is doomed to fail because they cannot break the link between an iPhone, iOS and the App Store. They are all part of one whole and you cannot get any one piece without the others. And as long as that is the case, they cannot claim Apple has a monopoly on the iOS market, what they have is a monopoly on the Apple Products market, which is fully legal. Not having alternative stores won’t get them anywhere.
That means to prove antitrust in apple’s case you would have to prove active hindrance, and not just a passive one. You would need to prove that Apple is doing something (now that they are huge) that they were not doing when they were small. Some sort of abuse of power to intentionally harm competitors and other businesses, and enforcing longstanding rules isn’t that. If anything you could argue the opposite. Apple has made great effort to create its app ecosystem which has allowed the creation and/or growth of numerous companies in the app business. Among them Epic is likely one of the ones to profit the most.
But now that their revenues have stabilized and aren’t growing like they used to, they need some way to make more money, since in the eyes of most businesses and the markets, if you aren’t growing you are dying. So they are making a play to get direct access to apples customers and products without going through Apple or paying a cent. This isn’t a prosecution, you don’t start with the strongest charges and then negotiate down.
Epic’s entire argument is “we want our own App Store on the apple App Store with root on the iPhone it’s installed on so we can manage it just like Apple does with their store so it’s fair, that way instead of just Apple making profits from their products, we can make some of the profits too, see how fair that is” and that, their intent to use their customers and their own marketshare to force Apple to change their products is itself anticompetitive and could in theory itself be investigated for antitrust. Especially depending on what kind of language they are putting into the Epic Store’s exclusivity contracts regarding other platforms. As if for example they were tying being in their pc store to being in their android (and dreamed of iOS) store(s), then the justice dept could totally nail them.
It’s highly unlikely the US govt has any desire for a company 49% owned by tencent to have that kind of access to half the countries personal device, cause someday when sweeny dies, they will take control (China does love the long game after all).
Either way, unless you can disprove:
iPhone+iOS+iCloud+AppStore+Tv/MovieStore=Product
then no one will ever be able to claim iOS as a market or claim Apple has a monopoly over it. Epic lost this fight simply by starting it. And after the way Apple dropped nVidia like a ball of molten glass for 1 recall (1 instance of bad press) I don’t see Epic returning to Apple products for quite a long time, if ever.
Epic don't need more users, they need more loyal followers, ones willing to spend Money every other week on skins and dance moves.
Agreed though If Jobs was still in he would have set out to completely destroy Epic and the Unreal engine as well I'd guess by any and all means necessary.
My guess is that Steve Jobs would have nuked Epic's developer account on day 1 and made it impossible for them to return to the iOS App Store ever.
I can see players being passionate about a game, but loyal enough to follow Epic through the gates of hell? I don't see what Epic, or Tim Sweeney himself, has done to earn such trust and devotion. He's just loud on social media. And Fortnite is just a game in an oversaturated industry, and there are tons of other games one can waste their time on.
Looks like Epic has massively overestimated the loyalty of their fan base.
There was a couple of screen time apps removed. I think there was a nightshift one as well ...
However the reason for removing them was not the overlap, but because they used Mobile device management (only aimed at schools and enterprises) to get around security.
apple-pulled-screen-time-apps-because-they-used-invasive-technology-2019-4
Any others you care to chime in on ?