[I posted this in another thread, then realised it was probably more relevant here]
Is Apple's behaviour anti-competitive? I don't know that it is. It's Apples Store, they built it. If it was my store and Company X wanted to sell its goods in it; taking up your resources, using your power, utilities and payment (merchant banking) services, that you paid for, I doubt I'd be happy about that. It's only different here because Apple is so dominant but, they didn't get to that position just by buying out competitors. They have *at least* three peer competitors, Google, Microsoft (arguably) and Samsung. Mostly it's the market that has led us to where we are now, with Apple having the largest share of App Store profits.
However, the free market doesn't work effectively without regulation, so I think there's definitely scope for investigation. If we look at the extreme case, of the EU deciding Apple must let companies like Spotify and the makers of, "Hey" sell there products in the App Store without Apple taking a percentage - then I think that would be abhorrent. People should be paid for their work, and Apple does a lot of work to make the App Store function, not withstanding it's (many) imperfections. Apple should pay more taxes, a lot more taxes but that's another question and I'm not sure that can be solved effectively without far more international cooperation. So long as companies can trade freely across international borders, and so long as countries maintain separate legal jurisdictions, Multinationals like Apple, will always be able to play one off against the other and pay ridiculous low levels of tax. Could the EU impose limits on the level/type of charges Apple can take? Perhaps, 30% does seem quite high, and, whilst the market does seem to be baring it, it could be that it is, nevertheless unfair from a larger socioeconomic stand point. How that would play out across the industry, we'd have to wait and see but it seems to me that either extreme view i.e Apple shouldn't be investigated or Apple should operate the App Store for free don't bare scrutiny.