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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> The pizza restaurant next door is a monopolist in the pizza category on my street.

That's ridiculous. Sure, it may be easiest to order from the guy next door, but if you don't like the pizza next door, you can easily call the guy 3 blocks down the street.

My point is you have options when it comes to pizza. There are many types of businesses that simply do not have any options besides Google. Don't believe me? Ask literally anyone who works in digital advertising. If you were planning any kind of digital ad campaign that relied on search, and you said you weren't going to spend on Google, they'd think you were insane. "Oh yeah, I've decided to put all my search ad spend on Bing." It sounds ridiculously laughable just writing it out.

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By this logic Apple is a monopoly in the mobile space since nobody can afford to ignore them when building apps.

People absolutely can afford to ignore Apple in the mobile space, except if your app is 100% reliant on the US market. iOS is only about 20-25% of the global market.

We're talking about US antitrust law and its enforcement in this thread. And in the US market iOS is the priority for app developers.

Very few US companies operate only in the US as far as app development, and none of the statistics I've seen so far concern solely the US.

In any case, if you're making a social media app or other international app, an Android version is likely more important.

You're kind of completely missing the point you're responding to.

There is no such thing as international anti-trust. In this conversation the US market is the only thing that matters since we are talking about US law. Hence, android does not really matter much for revenue.

That is not entirely true, because the internet is inherently international. It is a different kind of anti-trust, though I recognize that laws haven't caught up to it.

Even in the US, Apple does not have even close to a monopoly over Android, anyways. At best they have 50% of the marketshare.

iOS has 58.54% market share in the US according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

And yet iOS generates 80% more revenue than Android does[0]. If you want to make money, you can't ignore Apple.

[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/03/apples-app-store-...

If you monetize mainly by charging people for your app, sure. If you sell mandatory subscriptions or make your money from ads, Android is more important.

This makes sense on paper but iOS users also tend to have higher disposable income[0] which would make them spend more on subscriptions and be more valuable ad targets.

[0] https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spe...

That study is US-only, too. If you're making a solely US-based ad-servicing service (which makes very little sense, and if you are you should spend time on internationalization before spending time on your iOS app), otherwise if you are making a subscription service only in the US that does make sense.

And even if the trends did hold up internationally, and I really suspect they don't, Android would still be better for ads and subscriptions internationally due to nearly three times the market share, despite a bit more than half the disposable income.

I don’t see why the trends wouldn’t hold up internationally. Android is more popular than iOS internationally because the vast majority of the world has a lower PPP than the US. Android is popular in places like India which pale in comparison to US revenues per customer simply based on PPP alone.

I really don't believe that is true. Even in countries with high GDP iPhones can be much less popular than Android, for example Germany, or Italy, or Japan, or Finland, by pretty massive margins.

People don't really buy iPhones as soon as they have money unless it is a status symbol in their culture, which it really is the more the country is Americanized/anglophone. I think that correlation holds up much better than GDP PPP. There is no real reason for money to predict iOS market share except for that.

That's not universal - anecdotally I've seen Android versions that end up generating 80-120% more than the iOS version (per user). It depends a lot on the market and your product. Also, in other situations I can't help but wonder if it could be put down to Android's 2nd class citizen status in many companies. If you're going to give your iOS users a native experience (with no expense spared) while doing the bare minimum for Android (or not at all) then yes - you will earn substantially more per user on iOS.

I really didn't think about that one. Yes, it's entirely true, a ton of Android apps are so broken that I would have no reason to buy the app or service.

This doesn’t really make any sense. If there were overwhelming riches to be had in the Android market, companies would allocate greater resources to making Android apps good. But there aren’t — at least not compared to iOS — so the resource allocation is commensurate. Companies want money first and foremost; they don’t care which platform allows for a prettier UI if it gets in the way of $$$.

I don't think that is true. Even when app development is a very small share of total cost, and certainly insignificant compared to benefits especially re: other makets, such as Snapchat, the Android app might be horribly lacking.

There aren't overwhelming riches to be had on either platform (unless you're Apple or Google of course).

The point I'm trying to make here is that people will use that figure (often without much thought) to justify giving Android users a sub-par experience - which only serves to reinforce it. I've worked for several companies that have given parity to iOS and Android, and one that did not. For the former we did not observe a disparity that large. YMMV by region and industry of course.

Yes.

That would be closer to a monopsony (single buyer), though the details get a bit fuzzy when talking about platforms rather than straight customer-seller relationships.

Yes, it is. Not in defanged US antitrust law, but in reality.

I think there are lots of monopolies, yeah

That's because Apple is a monopoly, or at least Google and apple form a duoopoly. And if you make mobile apps you have to pay the google tax, apple tax, or more likely both.And play by their rules.

This raises and interesting point:

Would consumers be better served if app developers had to pay the Google tax, the Apple tax aaaaaand the Microsoft tax, the Samsung tax, the HTC tax, etc etc etc?

Yes, because if there was competition, that "tax" would likely be lower. For instance, Microsoft's fees for one-off purchases are just half of what Apple/Google are charging.

On android, you can publish yourself which Fortnite did [0]. iOS you cannot though and in fact they are getting sued for their "abusive monopoly in iOS app/in-app distribution services" [1].

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45063002#:~:text=The%20d....

[1]: https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/apple-dev/201...

Yes, it is technically possible. But good luck getting your users to do that if you aren't as big as fortnite.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...

NO AMP: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18652460/apple-class-actio...

I work for Bing. Awwww, man. ;-)

Doesn't that mean spending on Google is profitable? You can simply set a bid limit at less than your customer lifetime value (multiplied by conversion rate) on all channels. If someone outbids you systematically, then your spend in that channel drops to zero. Who cares whether it's Google or anyone else. The right move is to spend on all profitable channels, and if you run out of money, borrow more. Why pass up profit when capital is so cheap?

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