iOS devices is not a "market" in the sense of anti-competition laws. Phones are a market. Tablets are a market. Portable music players are a market.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
U.S. Supreme Court to Review Whether Lawsuit Accusing Apple of App Store Monopoly Should Proceed
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That's because at the time that Microsoft was found to have abused its monopoly position, you DID have to buy a Windows desktop. For business use, there was no other viable option; the Mac was ridiculously moribund in the mid-1990s with Apple teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Linux was not yet much of a player outside of servers run by adventurous geeks who wanted to play with it and/or didn't want to pay for a commercial UNIX system. Commercial UNIX had no real workstation presence outside of very tiny niche markets pretty much owned by Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics (and most such UNIXes didn't even run on Intel-based i386 systems, anyway, which made them even more expensive). Microsoft even tried to make the argument that Windows competed with mainframes. The idea of installing a mainframe in one's office in order to have a viable workstation OS doesn't really fly and was roundly mocked even at the time.
Windows ran about 93% of the computer systems in the world at the time they were found guilty. Apple (and everyone else) could only dream of commanding such market share.
The computing world was a very different place at the time. Java and other platform-independent development tools weren't very robust yet—in part because they were actively sabotaged by Microsoft. Web apps didn't exist and a majority of people even in 1st-world nations weren't yet connected to the Internet, anyway. There were no smart phones or any other kind of device to do work on. If you wanted to run much software, you bought a PC with Windows; you had little choice.
Microsoft lost the antitrust case because not only was it so blatantly obvious they were the only game in town for most of the populace, but they actively threatened competitors, entered into "licensing agreements" and "partnerships" only to steal their partners' technology and then drive them into bankruptcy, and successfully coerced OEMs into offering no OS other than Windows. (E.g., IBM was forbidden to ship OS/2 on their own computers. If they didn't agree to this, they could not sell computers running Windows.) The abuse was rampant and all of this was well documented at trial.
The iPhone has a lot of competition in Android and the handset market is robust; last I knew, the iPhone has a 15% sales market share, worldwide. I'm not seeing a monopoly in either software or hardware, nor has (to date) a pattern of abuse been exposed.
I'm not sure why that makes a difference. The analogy holds—you're choosing to partake in a product of which there are many competitors, but you don't have absolute choices with what you buy, use, or consume on that platform while you're at see.
The SCOTUS ruling that you can violate antitrust law without being a monopoly would be a surprising change. Remember that in the case of the eBooks suit Amazon wasn't considered to have a monopoly that it was abused, despite the fact that it owned the ebooks market writ large.
It is hard or atleast I find it hard to communicate accurately on threads. Tyvm
I just posted something from an analytics company called Statista that will even break down percentages by manufacturer.
https://www.statista.com/statistics...by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/
I'm finding it difficult to find a lot of sources for just the US. Most focus on global.
Edit:
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/
That's ridiculous. For $99, you get the same software development tools that Apple uses. You get their software review services for free. You get lots of cloud services for free. Every year you get about 100 hours of high quality videos explaining lots of important things about software development. Your apps are made available in almost all countries in the world. I get tons of downloads from countries where I would never have a chance to sell. It's an absolute bargain.
And what do you mean when you say "even for free apps"? With free apps, Apple doesn't make a penny from sales. If there was a difference between free and paid apps, you would at best expect no fees for paid apps.
iOS is no more a market than Windows yet Microsoft was taken to court for anti-trust behavior.
This isn't even accurate. You can sideload the app. All you need is a free Apple developer account, and then you can download packages and sign them yourself and load them on to the iOS device using XCode.
Yes, it's difficult, and you need a Mac (but you can get one used for like 20 dollars which will do just fine). This is a good thing. You should know what you're doing before you install random stuff from the internet.
Yes, it's difficult, and you need a Mac (but you can get one used for like 20 dollars which will do just fine). This is a good thing. You should know what you're doing before you install random stuff from the internet.
No you didn't. There were several other choices. To name a few off the top of my head: Sun, SGI, HP, and even Apple.
What is fun is watching tech geeks (myself included) make arguments stating that they know, definitively, which side in a giant monopoly case is right or wrong.
But what is even better is watching my fellow geeks confidently present a definitively better case than some of the best lawyers on the planet have made OR better cases than the frickin’ Supreme Court will make.
Wow.
I mean, damn. That’s a whole new level of arrogance.
But what is even better is watching my fellow geeks confidently present a definitively better case than some of the best lawyers on the planet have made OR better cases than the frickin’ Supreme Court will make.
Wow.
I mean, damn. That’s a whole new level of arrogance.
Remember that lots of purchases are made with gift cards. If you buy a $100 gift card, Apple doesn't get anywhere near $100 for that card. The stores selling gift cards want their cut. If you buy with a credit card, the credit card company wants its cut. The difference between the $100 and what Apple gets comes out of Apple's 30 percent, not the developer's 70 percent. I have bought gift cards with 20% rebate, there's not much money left for Apple.
I think your post is a whole new level of arrogance. A decision hasn't been made and there are at least two sides to every argument. I do not see anything arrogant about people offering their opinions supporting their position.
I was replying to someone referring to “Microsoft being a monopoly and the browser wars” as being even slightly relevant to this case about Apple having only 1 controlled App Store.
If iOS was 95% of the market. And it was cornering “the market in app stores”
sure. Still doubtful. Not sure there’s much of a “market” in App stores. A more relevant case would be iOS having 95% market share, and using that to push Apple Music, and force Spotify or other streaming music services out of business.
This problem hasn't occurred for the various distribution channels of computer apps so why would it be a problem for iOS apps?
Doesn't Apple already take that risk by forcing everything to be obtained from the App Store? QC may be better but the risk is still present.
The reason the Apple app ecosystem isn’t an unstable version of anything goes, caveat emptor, Wild West is that they control it. And that comes at a cost for which I’m happy to pay.
Last edited:
The ability to load from a source other than Apple does not prevent you from continuing to load strictly from Apple. My Android phone allows me to use alternative stores. I choose not to. Haven't had any issues. I don't see it as being any different with iOS.
US anti-competition laws.
A "natural monopoly", like Ford being the only company making Ford cars, or Apple being the only company making iPhones, does not count as a monopoly as far as anti-competition laws in the USA (or most everywhere) are concerned.
Antitrust is a company leveraging of one of their products to force the user to adopt another "product". A monopoly by itself is not illegal. That's what Apple is doing with the App Store.
I was replying to someone referring to “Microsoft being a monopoly and the browser wars” as being even slightly relevant to this case about Apple having only 1 controlled App Store.
If iOS was 95% of the market. And it was cornering “the market in app stores”
A more relevant case would be iOS having 95% market share, and using that to push Apple Music, and force Spotify or other streaming music services out of business.
Or if Apple opened an Android App Store and told developers "our App Store fee is 30 percent if you sell the Android version through Apple's store, otherwise it is 60%". That would be anti-competitive. Which is probably one reason why Apple doesn't do it.
I am sure this has been mentioned else where in this thread but if I buy an Xbox, I am forced to buy games made for the Xbox. I cannot purchase Playstation games to play on my Xbox, and vice versa. Consumers have a choice. If you don't like being walled in to the iOS platform, you have the choice to go to the Android platform.
Poor analogy. I'm not aware of Microsoft preventing you from playing a PlayStation game on your Xbox (or vice-versa).