No. No no no. This is completely wrong. If you want to use brick and mortar stores as an analogy, here's a great example of how that works, courtesy of mrcheckout.net
"The typical breakdown of margins are: If a products costs $1 to produce, that product will retail for $4. That product that retails for $4 will wholesale for $2 to distributors and stores that purchase direct. Big box retailers like Target may offer to pay $1.25 to the manufacturer if the product costs $1 to produce. That is the typical profit margin."
Companies like Target still sell their own branded products right alongside these items from other vendors. Items that they take a huge cut of every sale of every time they're sold.
Running a brick and mortar store like Target (or even a massive digital store like the App Store) requires a lot of expense (in Apple's case, not just hosting, but R&D, marketing, teams to approve apps and support developers, etc.). There is nothing stopping Spotify from building their own phone and app store, just like there's nothing stopping Johnny the Candlemaker from building a Target competitor. In both cases, they just don't want to pony up the expense to do it themselves. And they feel entitled to reap free benefits off of the expense that Apple has paid to build this platform.
Apple is in the right on this one, 100%. Here's hoping they win, and win big.
Stores also position their house brand products adjacent to competing name brand products on the shelf. The store dictates how their shelves are arranged, where the products are placed, and the most valuable spaces, at eye level, or on the end caps, can also go to the brands willing to negotiate deals for more favorable shelf placement.
Which brands should be promoted in their sales, or featured in places like their flyers? Again, up to the store, or in conjunction with the brand.
The store also has the data on what sells, what doesn't, and exploits that to determine which products it offers through its house brands.
They can also choose which payment methods they accept, and the methods in which they accept them (like eschewing a higher fee card like AMEX, or NFC payments).
OP also tacitly recognizes, but fails to acknowledge that malls have complete control over their tenant mix, and if they choose to introduce a second jewelry store selling Rolexes into the mix, including their own, that is their call.
The net lease agreements that stores enter into with mall owners may also specify that their tenants can be responsible for taxes, maintenance, insurance,
in addition to rent itself. Or, with percentage leases, the landlord also demands…
gasp… a cut of the revenues from the store!
Don't a lot of these things sound strangely familiar? They should, and even those who haven't studied business, economics, or done business themselves should be able to recognize that all these evil things that Apple does are hardly unique. They just haven't attracted the same kind of scrutiny, brought upon by CEOs of companies who grandstand to promote their own self interests. #1 baby, and again, no different that what Apple is doing. There are no saints in business, but plenty of hypocrites.
