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EU to Accuse Apple of Unfairly Blocking Third-Party Access to NFC Payment Technology on iPhone
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Care to list at least three of the "nothing but problems"?
As a non-EU citizen, I find their restrictions on access to their job market to be anti-competitive, as is their standardized currency. With whom can I file a complaint?
Given the egregious previous violations we’ve witnessed in reviewed apps, they don’t seem to be too useful or reliable anyways. Their app store review process even failed to notice EPIC’s Fortnite third-party payment system.
As the guy above just said: security by obscurity doesn’t work.
Neither does security through policy work too well - rules will be broken.
It’s like leaving your front door open and having your neighbour or landlord watch over it so it doesn’t get abused by thieves - instead of having a proper door lock.
I think the point of this discussion is if companies have the freedom to choose how they do business or not. For me Apple developing Apple Pay and not allowing access is a business choice, and its used as a procompetitive tool for the sales of their hardware. The EU believes Apple is to big and has to be controlled with regulation. But the reality of this case and the proposed regulation its about convenience services being painted as essential, not about essential services, because all smartphones have covered the essential functionality.
This is an important point to make: developers are always going to gravitate towards the most popular systems. Example: macOS has the same decentralized system as Windows for app distribution, yet gaming developers are far less likely to release their game on Mac due to it having a smaller gaming user base. Conversely, the centralized App Store developed much more robust gaming development interest due to the very large user base.
Why on earth do you think banks need any help from Apple to get user data from phone payments? They own their customers' transaction history already.
Card payments are essential services.
And within the next five years or so, physical cards will have been largely replaced by (smart)phones to make payments. In some economies, they already largely have been (China, some in Africa).
Apple doesn't even let 3rd party devs use it, so 30% of zero is nothing, yes apple technically doesn't take any money.
Just like developers created the problem of having only two major desktop operating systems to choose from because they decided not to support *nix, OS/2, Amiga, Atari, CP/M...
The operating system market is a natural monopoly - the way the mobile OS market has evolved from the early 2000's to now is almost a mirror image of how the desktop operating system market evolved between the early 1980's and the late 1990s. It was always going to evolve into a two-horse race between a mainstream player and a niche player. This isn't "the developers'" fault any more than gravity is Isaac Newton's fault.
EDIT: Interestingly, if you were to time-travel back to the late 1990's and tell someone that there would be two major players in the Smartphone market today, most people would probably guess that those players would be Microsoft and Palm.
Then why do you think Apple needs to be forced to side load etc. if it's "natural"?
The countries that are mostly cashless, they developed a specific regulation to achieve this. In the rest of the world including the EU, where you can still pay with cash and credit card, its a convenience.
I really find it funny how people can be so freedom-loving to condem the evil "regulations" but at the same time not realise that these regulations actually give them strictly more freedom.
and the reason side loading so low is ... Google didn't make it simple
and those companies that have tried leaving the Play Store went back because ... combination of marketing and lack of simple side loading.
So, not knowing what Apple's solution would be, if it is easy, and the company can market it well, we might see a couple leave. TBD at this point.
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@vipergts2207
Maybe I am missing something ...
In regards to the app store, in the iOS world Apple can either
1. Prevent competition
2. Ignore competition
3. Encourage competition
From this side it looks like Apple is doing item #1.
Regulation have to be done when needed, not when you want to cripple companies, and they have to be fair for all the players.
The U.S. needs to start extracting money from all these foreign countries
What you're missing is that you're defining a market by Apple's product. Does VISA "prevent competition" by not allowing competitors to access the NFC chip on a VISA card? Does Walmart "prevent competition" by not allowing Target to set up shop inside Walmarts stores.
There's a very simple argument that the EU could make. Apple is huge, so we want to regulate them to break up the market. I disagree with that argument in the context of Apple, but it is a reasonable one. That doesn't mean that Apple is doing anything wrong or "anti-competitive".
Facebook? Absolutely. The public harm caused by Facebook across the globe should definitely be mitigated by breaking up a global monopoly where Facebook has actively prevented the growth of competition. It should be the number one antitrust target across the globe.
Google? Absolutely. They've entered into agreements with their direct horizontal competitors to install Google Play services across almost all android devices outside of China. That's the reason that people talk about Apple and Google being in an app store duopoly. Because Google entered into agreements to limit competition.
"Natural Monopoly" is a term that holds a very specific definition. The only thing "natural" really implies in this context is that there is little that can be feasibly done to avoid a market from becoming monopolistic.
It generally refers to markets that tend toward a state of monopoly. The implication is that, if left to its own devices, a naturally monopolistic market will evolve to a state where it is controlled by only one or a couple of very large players.
Consumers have little to no bargaining power in a monopoly, so "the invisible hand of the market" effectively ceases to exist. The choice then becomes whether to leave the market as it is and let those major players dictate the terms of participating in those markets (in this case, owning a smartphone), or imposing some other level of control (usually through government regulation) to either curb specific abuses of that monopoly power, or give consumers more competitive leverage against the monopolist. In most cases, regulatory controls like this only get introduced when it has become quite clear that a major player is abusing their monopolistic power.
Forcing the ability to side-load is one of those "give consumers more leverage" type of regulations. It is probably the least invasive way possible to give more market control back to Apple's customers and still let Apple have control over their own store. More drastic options would include things like forcing Apple to separate their hardware divisions from their software and OS divisions, or just outright outlining the terms at which Apple can continue to offer an App store.
Is it that or is the EU looking interoperability between Apple, Google and associated tech/services?
For a lot of these items coming from the RU, Japan, and others (?), most are not Apple specific.
NFC? yeah, that is Apple specific.
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This seems like a great excuse for banks to stop supporting Apple Pay and the Wallet app and instead make us launch their own apps to make payments. Just seems like a way for them to collect more data on us. Seems like a lose lose for consumers since we will lose privacy and the convenience of using one app.
Plus how is this different that what Apple is doing with the upcoming Tap to Pay contactless feature? Apple is opening that up to third parties?
Plus how is this different that what Apple is doing with the upcoming Tap to Pay contactless feature? Apple is opening that up to third parties?
I'm not sure what you mean by interoperability in this context. NFC chips are already interoperable. You use the same reader for Apple Pay, Google Pay, Tap to Pay cards, etc.
What if a bank wants to implement a useful NFC feature in their banking app that Apple's Wallet app doesn't allow for? Instead of being able to create a unique and useful experience for those using their card in their own app, Apple won't allow it. This keeps the bank from creating unique, beneficial features for their own card that competes against the Apple Card. Apparently you don't see these things as anti-competitive and you're free to that belief. Like I said before, governments can see that stuff for exactly what it is. Good on them for taking action.
As an aside, what on Earth could Apple do with access to an NFC chip in a credit card?? A credit card isn't an interactive device. It has a single purpose, to make purchases. It's a completely passive item.
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