9 ms·

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on any market.

echelon 5y ago
They control computing for 50% of Americans. Not games, not movies. All computing. And all of the commerce around that computing. You have to pay their tax to interact with Apple customers in any way. Who are Apple customers? 50% of Americans. It's a protection racket and it's anticompetitive af. Furthermore, you can't use your own software stack / runtimes, have to dance to arbitrary rules, and can't deploy or update when you want or need to. Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame. "We're protecting customers" really means "we're tying all of your hands and forcing you to walk the plank". I totally get how you love your shiny pocket device and you own Apple shares (and may even work there), but this company is destroying our industry and making it unfathomably hard for startups to get off the ground and succeed. Imagine if Apple hadn't made these draconian choices. We'd still have the technology we have today, but startups would be able to deploy when and how they want. And they wouldn't have to pay their margins away.
- insert_coin 5y ago
  Yeah, computing is not a market. I get you are trying to win an easy sentimental argument, but making your own market definitions will not make them a monopoly. Apple sells products, not "computing". In no market where they sell products they have a monopoly.
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    How is computing not a market?? Computing covers many of the things people do in a modern society, including: - Communication - Banking - Investing & trading - Finding information - Applying to jobs In what world is that not a critical market?
  - devit 5y ago
    They have a monopoly on devices running iOS apps, and a monopoly on channels to deliver mobile software to anyone who uses an iPhone (i.e. either their App Store or Safari).
    - singlow 5y ago
      So Does GM have a monopoly on Chevrolets? Does that mean they can be regulated as a monopoly? Chevrolets compete with Fords and Mercedes and Honda, etc; so having a monopoly on your own brand is not a monopoly. I have both an Android phone and an iPhone, so when I hear that Apple has a phone monopoly it just seems like dumb whining.
      - echelon 5y ago
        Using your analogy here... Imagine there are only Chevrolet and Honda (Apple and Android). Imagine you could only go to Chevrolet-approved locations. That Italian place you like is on the destination list, but only because they pay 30% of their revenue to Chevy. The movie theater is protesting the 30% fee, so your car physically can't even visit. It's prohibited. The new boutique really wants to get business. After all it bought land and paid for real estate in a prime location. But Chevy doesn't like the look of it and asks them to tear it down and rebuild. All the artists at the market your Chevy brought you to are mad because they have to fork out to Chevy, and they're not even sure what Chevy has to do with any of this. They just want to sell their art. The builders are complaining because everyone is driving these damn cars with their silly rules, and nobody used to work or think this way. But suddenly everyone thinks Chevy's demands are okay. They're not entitled. Customers like Chevy.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        And yeah, web apps, so you can go through the drive-through anywhere you want. That works fine for some places but it's not at all comparable to parking and properly visiting, for many reasons of capabilities and reliability.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  >Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame. It really is funny how we went from a major anti trust case against Microsoft for simply bundling a web browser with their OS [1]. The original decision in that case was actually to break up Microsoft, though was lost on appeal. And here we have Apple doing many magnitudes worse. Even in this original antitrust case, you could always bypass Microsoft entirely to install whatever software you wished. Apple has quite literally never allowed that possibility, has no intention of doing so, and any software you develop for the platform entitles Apple to a 30% cut. There's many markets with a profit margin under 10%, and here we have Apple taking 30%. And people defend them for it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
  - throw-away_42 5y ago
    > and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others More than "simply bundling a web browser".
    - avereveard 5y ago
      Also they were trying to vendor lock third party hardware, acting in concert with OEM, it was far deeper and wider than Apple controlling access on their own hardware/software/user stack.
      - avereveard 5y ago
        Apple damage control party has lost the plot if they're going haywire downvoting snippets of factual information
  - echelon 5y ago
    Apple fans are doing evil. They just don't realize it. They're too awestruck by the brand to understand the harm it does. Talk to your legislators. That is the way to fix this tribulation.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Apple certainly has a duopoly with Google in both the mobile operating systems market, and the mobile app distribution market. iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], and Android has 40%, and Google and the App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store[2]. Also, layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[3]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. [1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ [3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
- prepend 5y ago
  Your stats show web traffic, not sales or market share. For a monopoly you want to show market dominance by dollars, not activity. By sales units, Android dominates [0] with 327k vs iOS’ 38k (most recent quarter was 2019-q3). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_Sales.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_S...
  - Daishiman 5y ago
    You're being pedantic. It's the second of only two alternatives; it counts as monopoly power here and everywhere.
    - prepend 5y ago
      It’s vastly smaller though so doesn’t have the market power that a monopoly would have. When there’s a market with only two players where #1 has 75% of the market and #2 has 24%, describing #2 as being part of a monopoly is inaccurate. That’s like saying that Apple had a monopoly with Microsoft in the 90s because between the two of them they had the whole market.
bosswipe 5y ago
It's interesting to think that if Apple had been more popular in the 90s then the DOJ wouldn't have been able to stop Microsoft and between them they could have strangled the nascent open web. In this way a monopoly is actually better for consumers then a duopoly because it allows the government to step in.
ksec 5y ago
Define Monopoly? Apple have ~65% Market Share in US and over 70% in Japan.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  >A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. -Wikipedia It gets defined to death every time we have this discussion. Apple has a de-facto monopoly on the app store no matter if their phones have 1% or 100% of the market share of phones. This isn't about market share but if they abuse their position/control on the app store. Is Apple the "only supplier of a particular commodity" on the app store?
  - ksec 5y ago
    I dont disagree with you. I never said they dont have a monopoly, my reply was in reference to the OP comment around this post that Apple does not have monopoly or majority position in any market. The same thing utter out of Tim Cook month which is a spin or lying by omission.
  - stalfosknight 5y ago
    That’s like saying my landlord has a monopoly on collecting rent from every apartment in the building they own. Well duh! They built the damn thing from scratch. To make it about how Apple is somehow being abusive by setting the rules of the road and collecting tolls on their own property is asinine.
  - microtherion 5y ago
    That is assuming that the app store is a "market" for the purposes of monopoly law, which is indeed the argument that Epic is making, but hardly settled law.
xdennis 5y ago
GP is wrong about Apple being a monopoly, but he was also talking about "antitrust" and Apple is certainly preventing competition. It's not uncharacteristic. Apple was the leader of the wage-fixing cartel with Google, Intel and Adobe.

They control computing for 50% of Americans. Not games, not movies. All computing. And all of the commerce around that computing. You have to pay their tax to interact with Apple customers in any way. Who are Apple customers? 50% of Americans. It's a protection racket and it's anticompetitive af. Furthermore, you can't use your own software stack / runtimes, have to dance to arbitrary rules, and can't deploy or update when you want or need to. Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame. "We're protecting customers" really means "we're tying all of your hands and forcing you to walk the plank". I totally get how you love your shiny pocket device and you own Apple shares (and may even work there), but this company is destroying our industry and making it unfathomably hard for startups to get off the ground and succeed. Imagine if Apple hadn't made these draconian choices. We'd still have the technology we have today, but startups would be able to deploy when and how they want. And they wouldn't have to pay their margins away.

insert_coin 5y ago
Yeah, computing is not a market. I get you are trying to win an easy sentimental argument, but making your own market definitions will not make them a monopoly. Apple sells products, not "computing". In no market where they sell products they have a monopoly.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  How is computing not a market?? Computing covers many of the things people do in a modern society, including: - Communication - Banking - Investing & trading - Finding information - Applying to jobs In what world is that not a critical market?
- devit 5y ago
  They have a monopoly on devices running iOS apps, and a monopoly on channels to deliver mobile software to anyone who uses an iPhone (i.e. either their App Store or Safari).
  - singlow 5y ago
    So Does GM have a monopoly on Chevrolets? Does that mean they can be regulated as a monopoly? Chevrolets compete with Fords and Mercedes and Honda, etc; so having a monopoly on your own brand is not a monopoly. I have both an Android phone and an iPhone, so when I hear that Apple has a phone monopoly it just seems like dumb whining.
    - echelon 5y ago
      Using your analogy here... Imagine there are only Chevrolet and Honda (Apple and Android). Imagine you could only go to Chevrolet-approved locations. That Italian place you like is on the destination list, but only because they pay 30% of their revenue to Chevy. The movie theater is protesting the 30% fee, so your car physically can't even visit. It's prohibited. The new boutique really wants to get business. After all it bought land and paid for real estate in a prime location. But Chevy doesn't like the look of it and asks them to tear it down and rebuild. All the artists at the market your Chevy brought you to are mad because they have to fork out to Chevy, and they're not even sure what Chevy has to do with any of this. They just want to sell their art. The builders are complaining because everyone is driving these damn cars with their silly rules, and nobody used to work or think this way. But suddenly everyone thinks Chevy's demands are okay. They're not entitled. Customers like Chevy.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        And yeah, web apps, so you can go through the drive-through anywhere you want. That works fine for some places but it's not at all comparable to parking and properly visiting, for many reasons of capabilities and reliability.
ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
>Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame. It really is funny how we went from a major anti trust case against Microsoft for simply bundling a web browser with their OS [1]. The original decision in that case was actually to break up Microsoft, though was lost on appeal. And here we have Apple doing many magnitudes worse. Even in this original antitrust case, you could always bypass Microsoft entirely to install whatever software you wished. Apple has quite literally never allowed that possibility, has no intention of doing so, and any software you develop for the platform entitles Apple to a 30% cut. There's many markets with a profit margin under 10%, and here we have Apple taking 30%. And people defend them for it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- throw-away_42 5y ago
  > and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others More than "simply bundling a web browser".
  - avereveard 5y ago
    Also they were trying to vendor lock third party hardware, acting in concert with OEM, it was far deeper and wider than Apple controlling access on their own hardware/software/user stack.
    - avereveard 5y ago
      Apple damage control party has lost the plot if they're going haywire downvoting snippets of factual information
- echelon 5y ago
  Apple fans are doing evil. They just don't realize it. They're too awestruck by the brand to understand the harm it does. Talk to your legislators. That is the way to fix this tribulation.

heavyset_go 5y ago

Apple certainly has a duopoly with Google in both the mobile operating systems market, and the mobile app distribution market. iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], and Android has 40%, and Google and the App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store[2]. Also, layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[3]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. [1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ [3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

prepend 5y ago
Your stats show web traffic, not sales or market share. For a monopoly you want to show market dominance by dollars, not activity. By sales units, Android dominates [0] with 327k vs iOS’ 38k (most recent quarter was 2019-q3). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_Sales.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_S...
- Daishiman 5y ago
  You're being pedantic. It's the second of only two alternatives; it counts as monopoly power here and everywhere.
  - prepend 5y ago
    It’s vastly smaller though so doesn’t have the market power that a monopoly would have. When there’s a market with only two players where #1 has 75% of the market and #2 has 24%, describing #2 as being part of a monopoly is inaccurate. That’s like saying that Apple had a monopoly with Microsoft in the 90s because between the two of them they had the whole market.

bosswipe 5y ago

It's interesting to think that if Apple had been more popular in the 90s then the DOJ wouldn't have been able to stop Microsoft and between them they could have strangled the nascent open web. In this way a monopoly is actually better for consumers then a duopoly because it allows the government to step in.

ksec 5y ago

Define Monopoly? Apple have ~65% Market Share in US and over 70% in Japan.

Dah00n 5y ago
>A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. -Wikipedia It gets defined to death every time we have this discussion. Apple has a de-facto monopoly on the app store no matter if their phones have 1% or 100% of the market share of phones. This isn't about market share but if they abuse their position/control on the app store. Is Apple the "only supplier of a particular commodity" on the app store?
- ksec 5y ago
  I dont disagree with you. I never said they dont have a monopoly, my reply was in reference to the OP comment around this post that Apple does not have monopoly or majority position in any market. The same thing utter out of Tim Cook month which is a spin or lying by omission.
- stalfosknight 5y ago
  That’s like saying my landlord has a monopoly on collecting rent from every apartment in the building they own. Well duh! They built the damn thing from scratch. To make it about how Apple is somehow being abusive by setting the rules of the road and collecting tolls on their own property is asinine.
- microtherion 5y ago
  That is assuming that the app store is a "market" for the purposes of monopoly law, which is indeed the argument that Epic is making, but hardly settled law.

xdennis 5y ago

GP is wrong about Apple being a monopoly, but he was also talking about "antitrust" and Apple is certainly preventing competition. It's not uncharacteristic. Apple was the leader of the wage-fixing cartel with Google, Intel and Adobe.