Imagine if Microsoft did this on PCs. a) prohibiting the installation of non-windows store software (sideloading) and b) insisting that all purchases done via apps give them a 30% cut. I think this is a ridiculous practice on the behalf of Apple.
Thank goodness that wasn't the case.
This is what I use on my Jailbroken iPhone.
Ultimately, the best Reddit experience is less Reddit.
If you're still using Google and prefer a more technical approach to your inquiries, maybe it's time for to consider a more refined tool?
The Reddit apps I've tried stick to the meth-addled idea to use fixed floating header bars, which are useless and really annoy me.
App Stores suck. App Stores with no side-loading are even worse. Platforms that are locked down so much that you can't even install your own OS are worse.
We used to bitch about Tivoization on HN all the time, it seems post iPhone, everyone seems A-OK.
People were not making money by being shareholders, that's why.
In every day life, the number of people who think “App Stores suck” is infinitesimal.
Does that mitigate any of the concerns people have about either company?
This community used to have a strong focus on openness, open source, permission less innovation and the avoidance of checkpoints and tolls, but what it's turned into is often a battle of fanboys, who roll out excuses and lowered standards for their favorites.
Yours is an easy position to maintain, until you have invested a lot of money and work in an app which gets booted from the App Store, or because Apple decides to shake you down for even more money.
Apple fans simultaneously say Apple has a small marketshare, but also brag that earn the majority of all smartphone industry profits. If the latter is true, it means that anyone wanting to make money on mobile software has no choice but to publish on the App Store, ergo, effectively a monopoly.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp
Isn't there a term for using dominance in one market to compel behavior in another?
This is not enforcing AMP on publishers in the results, and the argument that it is by using icons falls under the 'it's kind of the same' category.
I know it’s not the same but something feels similar to me.
AFAIK Firefox still exists as does KHTML.
Some days it really feels like there is nothing new under the sun.
Yes, I know some things seem "obvious" but it's a sliding scale per person... and, well that's the slippery slope.
Mind.blown.
Overall it feels a little bit like self-flagellation which I'm hoping is for the greater good, that DDG's algo will improve with use and eventually I won't need !g anymore.
Maybe DDG needs a browser extension that let's you seamlessly provide feedback with every !g to teach them what you were actually looking for.
Did you think your feigned ignorance was insightful? Google has 86% market share.
Instead, Apple invented a new computing platform and a new model to pay for it, it just worked, people were willing to pay for that, and we liked it.
But in the end I guess what matters more is whether you want a single person to control what you view or not, like when they banned James Joyce because of an illustration of a man skinny dipping.
In my opinion iOS was far better when there were fewer different devices released every year, but it's still better today than Android.
Also, the web is not even a great analogy period since it wasn't created by a private company. Apple created their phones, their App Store, they maintain it, and they provide the infrastructure for it. That's nothing like the internet.
I know, I know, people who bought iPhones knew what they were buying into.
So yes, lots of people buy iPhones exactly because if Apples iron grip.
It would be like you using AOL and only being able to view the channels that AOL offered (which is exactly what it was). Apple has no authority to tell you what you can do with your device once you've purchased it but you also don't have the authority or the right to demand that Apple service your device if you jailbreak it or mod it.
This is literally the exact same situation as Xbox and PS4. Xbox doesn't allow people to play PS4 games on an Xbox. Is that anti-competitive? Is that anti-consumer? Is that Xbox having absolute authority over what you can do on your Xbox? Get out of here with that nonsense.
This is just three big corporations fighting over their respective slices of the pie, if you think any of this is being said or done for your benefit I’m sure Epic has a plentiful supply of really tasty Koolaid for you. But no pie, sorry.
Apple’s rules prevent vendors from linking to external service account setup/management. You cannot even mention the existence thereof, let alone link to it or advertise the options provided therein. Consumers are explicitly kept in the dark about any method other than payment through the App Store.
That’s the stunning uppercut. The size of Apple’s fee is merely a follow-up kick to the nads.
This is why service providers, from Hey.com to Netflix, have a special irritation for the App Store rules, and since this rule directly distorts markets by affecting consumer choice is why so many competition regulators have a file open about it.
If Microsoft was playing hardball with Rockstar over the next version of GTA, as an example, Sony would be falling over themselves rushing to get it as a PlayStation exclusive. The console market and app market just aren't comparable.
Google basically says, "we have a store. Sell through us and we take a cut. Or sell directly, or through some other store, and we'll warn users that we haven't vetted that stuff for security etc."
I have no idea why you'd want to, but you can... UWP apps run just fine on Xbox and can be sold via the store - they just don't get access to the "exclusive" partition of the system (which you need to access certain system resources, such as > 2GB RAM). Sideloading prebuilt UWP apps is also possible. The exclusive partition is a different situation entirely - you need to be an approved developer to even access the SDKs.
I'd say there's a difference between what Xbox (and Playstation, and Nintendo) does compared to Apple by virtue of the consoles not being "open" development platforms (Xbox UWP aside). Anyone can grab the iOS SDK and start making apps, but only registered developers can do so on game consoles. Whether that's justified I don't know, I honestly haven't put enough thought into it. And whether courts would see that as a reason I definitely don't know.
Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft.
If anything, smartphone stores will be under more scrutiny.
I never thought about it like this. It could be viewed differently because the Xbox is a game console and the iphone is a general handheld computer, but perhaps it should be illegal to restrict users installing software on your device by any means they choose, though there's no reason for you to support those means.
What is an open platform and how does it get defined? Installing software is a feature implemented by the manufacturer. Should we really be requiring Apple or any manufacturer, by law, to implement specific defined features to support and enable side loading and management of external apps. Who gets to define those features and say which products should or shouldn’t have them? Who gets to certify compliance? Who gets to specify open as a technical standard that can actually be implemented?
If this had been done in the 80s, we’d probably still be stuck with consoles having an 80s style cartridge slot on them, with specs written in legislation and updatable only by government committee.
Secondly, you can "side load" iOS apps as well. You just have to go through a process of jailbreaking your iPhone which is not illegal but it may void the warranty.
When you buy the iPhone you are also buying into the platform. If having multiple options for app stores is a necessity for you then an iPhone is the wrong device to purchase. Buy something else. There is nothing wrong with voting with your wallet as there are other phones on the market for people to buy.
The argument is that that approach is anti-competitive and unfair, especially since Apple itself gets a large cut of app sales.
I'm not coming down hard on either side, just yet. But I don't like the feel of this sort of lock-in, and almost no one would question the use of a term like "lock-in." Some lock-in is surely legal, even if almost always unpleasant. But it's only a hop, skip and a jump to full-fledged antitrust.
Apple themselves? Part of their marketing is literally that you can do everything on their devices.
> Should we really be requiring Apple or any manufacturer, by law, to implement specific defined features to support and enable side loading and management of external apps.
I can't see why not, the mobile app market has terrible competition, there's a big market issue here.
What you may be thinking of is that the consoles are not the main source of profit. And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles.
>And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles.
Yup, and during which time, they sell at a huge loss.[1]
You're right that Nintendo tries to buck this trend, but they also realize it's a delicate balancing act.[2]
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-x-price-explanation... [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/18/sony-microsoft-gam... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nintendo-wont-sell-switch...
But what I think you mean to propose is a restriction at the software level, not hardware level. That anyone who sells an operating system must allow any app to be installed within that OS. I think we leave it as an exercise for the reader to define "operating system" when it comes to our increasingly "smart" homes and cars.
The iPhone boot ROM will only launch operating systems cryptographically signed by Apple:
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-security-o...
It's like claiming that nobody can have a monopoly on electric car charging stations because the customer could just buy a gasoline powered car and electric cars don't even have majority market share. It's still a monopoly. It's a monopoly on charging stations, not a monopoly on cars.
And the government doesn't classify trusts[1] by the dictionary definition of monopoly:
> 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. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
The market solved the problem in ways that the DoJ couldn’t have anticipated. It turned out that licenses fees for closed source web browsers were just not something that businesses and consumers were interested in putting up with.
Few remember how much of an equal offender Netscape was when it came to proprietary extensions to the web.
It wasn’t until 2010 that IEs market share started eroding. It didn’t have anything to do with the government.
Almost 20 years later, MS still has the same market share in both operating systems and office productivity and no one cares about browser dominance except for Google.
When MS was under investigation they were the most valuable company in the US. Now they are number 3.
So how effective was the government last time?
Bold of you to assume Google will keep that alive for a particularly long time.
Personally, I like iPhones precisely because they're not general purpose platforms. I'm also not sure the phrase "general computing platform" can even be well-defined in the era of "smart" everything.
Not that you'd want to, but if you decided to do it, the option would be readily available.
Yes, and that's also bad.
Yes, this is how capitalism works. The companies can be started by virtuous, far-sighted dreamers, like Steve Wozniak, Larry Page and John Lennon, but then they get infused by money from venture capitalists and investors who just want ROI.
Once they hire more than 5000 people, the edges of the company are not controlled by dreamers - worker bees are employed to make money by leveraging whatever is there to be leveraged. And so the mission drifts.
Or else, the company fails or disappears, which is what happened to John Lennon's company, Apple Music.
We need to rethink capitalism, so companies can grow to medium size, and stay there, providing good things to their customers in a virtuous, mutually beneficial way.
Jobs was the superior business person. At least, it turned out that way after he returned to Apple, rescued it from Scully, and spent decades turning it into a behemoth that changed the world.
Woz might have given the computers away just for the joy of it, but where would that have left us?
Tens of thousands of developers owe their livelyhood to Jobs' vision. They get to make apps and everything else, all because Steve created platforms and ecosystems that would sustain an entire industry.
Still, that doesn't excuse greed. Jobs is gone now, so he can't evolve the app store into what it should be becoming, which is a more mature version of the quality platform he created.
It wouldn't take much to fix this current hoo ha. Apple could just introduce a lower fee tier for trivial sales such as the re-supply of virtual currency in games. If they took 10% instead of 30%, the problem would be over, the platform would continue, the community would still have opportunity, consumers could play their games and buy their apps, and life would go on. Does that sound virtuous to you, eklanjo?
That's typically a broken window fallacy. You can't take this a proof of anything because you do not know what the world would have looked like if Apple did not exist - such developers could have gone and made other things on other platforms as well. A great artist will be able to produce great work even if they have to use spaghetti instead of paint. Tools are just tools.
The article is about Fortnite being excluded from Apple's monopoly distribution platform. That platform enriches Apple at the expense of consumers and software developers.
Are you saying it's a good thing that Apple can exclude Fortnite for trying to get around the Apple tax?
But I don’t trust game developers to run those stores. They’re total cowboys and they’d probably be full of security holes and privacy issues.
> Imagine if Sony did this on Playstation. a) prohibiting the installation of non-PlayStation games and b) insisting that all purchases done via their store give them a 30% cut.
Many platforms are like this -- and many also have the majority marketshare. Is this a call to redefine what platforms can and cannot control?
For PlayStation you pay the Sony tax for the convenience of integrating with their payment services, not because they'll ban you for using anything else.
It's also a super different situation in general; for example, Sony actually often pays developers to develop for their store (e.g. PubFund [1]), and does free marketing campaigns for them. Console makers live and die by their access to a pipeline of new exclusive games, so they treat game developers well; Apple doesn't, so it squeezes app developers for what it can. Hence why game developers are suing Apple but not Sony.
Hmmm -- not to stretch the analogy too thin, but is this similar to Apple though, where they allow you to sign in to subscription services (e.g. Netflix) with your existing account to the service, but don't allow sign ups (which would trigger payment processing)? Or is payment processing baked in there as well?
> For PlayStation you pay the Sony tax for the convenience of integrating with their payment services, not because they'll ban you for using anything else.
To clarify, has any developer integrated external payment services within a Playstation game / app / etc? From all the games and apps I've played with, I never remember any other payment system built in other than Sony's.
> It's also a super different situation in general; for example, Sony actually often pays developers to develop for their store ...
Blackberry did the same thing near the end of it's life -- I was at a hackathon where they were giving away Blackberries and cash to anyone who developed a Blackberry app -- but does not giving back really reflect as monopolistic?
Which is why I found Microsoft's bitching about the app store hilarious. They have been taking giant pieces of the action in Xbox for 20 years and tried to do the same in their sorry excuse for a Windows Store. I'd like to see them allow Stadia on the Xbox.
I actually agree with not allowing external payment processors on these (and mobile) platforms, especially for games where the audience is frequently naive kids.
Don't agree with the platform taking a huge cut of every transaction though. Maybe take a smaller cut and the billionaires can stop squabbling.
Don't agree with the platform taking a huge cut of every transaction though
Putting aside the ethics of Apple's content stranglehold for the moment, the economic side of things seems like a very nice deal -- 30% is not bad compared to various distribution deals (for physical and virtual goods) of which I have some slight familiarity.
Are there distribution platforms that allow you to get your app/product/etc to that many people without taking a cut?
I'm kind of fed up with Apple for a variety of reasons, but this doesn't seem like one of the problems to me.
I'm assuming you would also want to prohibit these "naive kids" from ever browsing the Internet too, am I right?
(Since there are plenty of website that accept payments through a variety of payment processors?)
Actually, looking now, I think you're right. It looks like Spotify disabled setting up subscriptions on PS4. I guess PS4 subscriptions are a small enough chunk of revenue for Spotify it didn't really matter to them.
I guess the real point is that PS4 just isn't a large enough chunk of these kinds of services' market share by revenue to matter; they don't need signups, since not many people primarily use Spotify via PlayStation.
Nintendo has had a clear monopoly on handheld consoles for several generations.
Sony had an extremely strong market position in the 5th and 6th generation gaming consoles but I wouldn't really call it a monopoly.
The only reason Sony is not charging exorbitant amounts (if they really aren't) is because they're in heated competition with Microsoft over being the preferred first release platform of popular games.
Apple wields it’s power indirectly, leading to the AppCasino and lousy UX.
Google pulls you in and monetizes you.
All of these companies do similar things in different ways.
Well, neither does Apple seeing that neither Netflix (for new customers) or Spotify allow in app purchases.
Sony actually often pays developers to develop for their store (e.g. PubFund [1]),
So does Apple - Apple Arcade.
Could Fortnite have in app purchases for the game consoles and bypass the stores?
It can be off by default, and probably should.
But trying to hair split console from computer from cellphone makes less and less sense everyday and we all know it.
I perceive capricious behaviour like this ad a threat to my liberty and well-being.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of "digital anti-globalism", but if this thing went to court, both sides would have their reasonable arguments. And let's hope that if there's a ruling, it rules in favor of open platforms. At the very least, I think it would be great if the courts rule that a platform that's built open and sold as open cannot be consequently closed. But I doubt that Apple will be forced to open its hardware to non-App Store programs.
And in fact Microsoft tried this (both with Windows RT and Windows 10 S) and in both cases few people bought in (or, in some cases, wound up 'confused' that other software wouldn't run, leading to the eventual sunsetting of Windows 10 S).
I do think both sides have reasonable arguments, but at the same time 'computing' has become ubiquitous, and Smartphones arguably even more so. Personally, I think we are in a weird state when we consider historical context; once upon a time, remember that GM would in fact make moves to ensure they did not get too much market share. I can't remember the number but I think they didn't want to go over 59%.
Of course you COULD have more market share even back then, but it also typically resulted in a lot more government oversight and willingness for the government to intervene in situations like this (thinking about Modems and Ma Bell here...)
IMO Google sidesteps the problem by not having a lot of 'handset' market share. (Also, perhaps more controversial to state, but their compliance with LE/Intelligence agencies probably allows more things to be ignored.)
I just don't know what to say anymore. Apple (and, dare I say, to a greater extent, Google) are doing the sorts of things that absolutely landed Microsoft in court and caused microsoft to make a number of decisions that kneecapped them in the first decade of the 2000s. It's been happening for years, and yet we are only now seeing enough people agreeing that we can talk about it without getting shouted down.
It’s funny to me that One of Microsoft's strongest arguments is “well we tried it and consumers don’t want it that way unless forced upon them”.
A separate concern is around anticompetitive behavior. There is no way to sideload an app, or even use a competing app store, and Apple is charging rent. This is pretty clearly anticompetitive behavior that harms consumers.
But iPads (though iOS was renamed/forked to iPadOS on those devices) are definitely marketed as general purpose computing devices. The headline on https://www.apple.com/ipad/ is "Your next computer is not a computer".
iPad/iPadOS have these same restrictions as iPhone/iOS.
I'm not arguing this is necessarily either wise or ethical of them, and there's a real sense in which this is orthogonal to the App Store's fee structure. But it seems to me that while Apple is going to face increasing pressure to change the way they run the App Store, the solution -- at least the solution Apple will offer -- very likely won't involve letting the iPad become a general purpose computer the way the Mac is.
An Apple laptop looks like a general purpose computing device. Do we want it not to be one, and become closer to a gaming console?
I think that merely looking at the guts and seeing which processor it has is kind of a red herring.
It does seem a bit tautological. A vendor can restrict access then simply argue this is not a general purpose computing device because look, you can't run the things we don't let you run.
I think if I were to answer this question now it would be based on the expectation of the end consumer to be expected to, or have the ability to program the device for general purpose tasks.
Things like game consoles, phones, smart appliances, etc. all start to blur that line but I think it comes down to the consumer's expectations.
Although interestingly, the Japanese console makers have continually tried to push the computer/development angle.
When the NES was released in Japan before the US, it was branded the "Family Computer" and you could get a keyboard and a version of BASIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_BASIC
Sony has had multiple attempts, with a consumer homebrew dev kit for the PS1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze ), and Linux for the PS2 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 ) and later PS3.
Historically, other game consoles could be used a "general purpose computing devices," such as the Sega Dreamcast with Windows CE and the Nintendo Famicom (which is short for Family Computer).
Afaik, there was never a Windows CE general purpose environment for the Dreamcast. Sega supported game developers using Sega's 100% propriatary OS or using Windows CE as embedded OS. Either way, the OS would ship on the disc, and isn't a lot more than a kernel and libraries.
Of course, BSDs and Linux were ported to the Dreamcast at some point, as with anything that can boot user provided code and has enough ram.
The dreamcast did have a web browser, and keyboard and mouse, but without significant local writable storage, would make a lousy general purpose computer.
Similar with Nintendo's Switch - Nintendo even tried to shut down a YouTuber's channel just for mentioning homebrew/jailbreaking for Switch.
It is such a shame and honestly i wish these devices were as open as PCs are. That they aren't is a testament to how much they have brainwashed people to think as normal that they have no control over their own devices and what they can do with them.
Of course, in this case piracy would be the primary reason for the restriction, but I think it's valid to look at places where the platform is controlled by a single vendor.
The appeal of developing in Apple's ecosystem has always been the exposure to large audiences, the (relatively decent) tooling, and the ability to creatively actualize your ideas. That last one goes away when Apple starts looking more like Sony.
I'll leave it up to lawyers to decide if this is illegal, but I know this certainly makes me less excited about developing my next iOS/OSX app
Anyway, I think platforms need to be regulated to be more open. We need a right to modify along with a right to repair. When I pay for a product that happens to support downloadable software, I should be free to put whatever software on it that I want. If apple allowed sideloading on iOS like they do on macOS this would not have blown up to the degree that it did.
The most egregious part of Apple’s rules, and the reason that online service providers have a special loathing, is that apps are disallowed from linking to, advertising, or even mentioning that it is possible to sign up/subscribe/buy/rent outside of the app.
This is why you won’t see MMOs like FFXIV through the App Store, and is why you can’t sign up for Netflix, or even follow a link to their sign-up, from within the app.
I believe the defaults now extend to software sourced outside of the app store must still be notarized by Apple. This impacts developers more than consumers I would guess, but certainly requires more effort from developers to create and distribute software.
Perhaps the hoops are fine and reasonable. That doesn't change the fact that hoops are being added.
Want to run Photoshop, IntelliJ or Outlook, 30% of what you charge is going to Apple.
Whether or not it's native or wine doesn't change the fact that Steam is pushing into Linux. They've shifted the responsibility from pushing linux support on the developer to providing linux support themselves.
Valve will have a much easier time improving proton than they will forcing devs to make Linux compatible games for little monetary reward.
Valve's decision to no longer support Ubuntu as a first-class distribution, a year ago, probably. Though that's just one distribution, not Linux as a whole.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/06/steam-announces-that-its...
Easy, reliably DoS -- and the user has no means of fixing this vulnerability, other than rooting the phone and hacking around. Which is made ever less feasible.
Removing an app from the App Store, and removing it from user's devices are two very different things. When any app is removed in this fashion, all users who already have the app still have access to everything they had access to before. The app just isn't listed on the App Store for new downloads.
"As of right now, those who have already downloaded Fortnite on iOS are still able to access the game; only new downloads are disabled as a result of Apple pulling the game from the App Store."
Even if they don't though, that's a marketing offence not a product one. If there's any government interference needed it's in the form of a mandatory "walled garden" label on the box.
Come to think of it, why are web browsers excluded from the in-app fee?
Let’s be honest here, the rules of the app store are arbitrary and designed to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the ecosystem, within the limits of what apple thought people would put it with. Turns out they may have miscalculated.
Non-technical users would love it. It would offer them an environment much more secure and free of malware where they can install applications without fretting about getting the latest CryptoLocker type trojan. Finding Windows software on the open web is kind of like driving around the ghetto and cruising for drugs. Are you installing from firefox.com or fᎥrefοⅹ.com?
Apple tries to walk the line and keep both these user groups happy. It's hard. So far they've handled it by designing MacOS more for the first group (it has an App Store and controls but they're optional) and iOS/iPadOS more for the second group.
By maintaining control over which apps can be sold to end users via the App Store, Apple is able to offer a layer of control over how these apps can access (or not) your personal data.
There's nothing ridiculous about wanting to maintain data privacy/security on mobile devices, and that being of a higher priority with mobile than with a PC.
Wouldn’t MS want to secure its laptops by bundling a browser?
Wouldn’t I have equally private and financial documents on a PC? location/gps can’t be that much of a differentiator.
It is monopoly bullying whoever they can. They just happen to not directly affect us, unless we happen to be a developer making lot of money or compete with apple in any way.
I am an app developer for iOS. It does directly affect me.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2015/05/continuing-to-protect-chro...
[2] Unless you're using Linux or the enterprise version of the browser.
The recently released new "stable" version of Firefox for Android that supports just 9 specific extensions at the moment might be actually even worse than Chrome.
Steam, for example, does no do that: you can sell your game on Steam and outside of Steam at the same time and Valve will have no problem with it.
Just switch to a competitor! Go-to Linux or Mac. All good, no antitrust here. /s
There’s bullshit with each platform. PS4 can play, but not with servers, Mac can do Java, nothing else can but PC, etc.
If your complaint is that it's bad for the app developers or users, then that's different, and maybe deserves criticism but not ridicule.
2020 is really an interesting year.
By actual sales of devices, iOS accounts for between 41-46% of the market. That users on iOS tend to use the web more from their devices doesn't somehow make it a monopoly.
And to be clear I don't think whether it's a monopoly or not is particularly relevant -- it's still arguably abusive, anticompetitive behavior -- but that misleading statcounter claim is used for disinformation on here daily.
The question isn't whether Apple has a large enough market share in the US for the courts to get involved — it very clearly does — the question is does it exhibit exclusionary behavior to the extent courts should get involved.
(I think it does exhibit exclusionary behavior, but I can see that being much more open to interpretation than the simple fact that it clears the 50% threshold.)
Regardless, my comment was just correcting the statement that Apple doesn't have a majority market share in any market, when in fact it has majority market share in the US market.
Apple does not have more than 50% marketshare of smartphones in the US. In most analyses it is between 41-43%, with an absolute high of 46%. Android accounts for the rest. And of course worldwide iOS is dwarfed by Android.
https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/smartphone-os-market...
EDIT: Of course this was down-arrowed. The citation of StatCounter is akin to claiming that the rodeo's parking lot has 80% pick-up trucks, therefore pick-up trucks have 80% of the market. It's absolute nonsense but it somehow appears on HN repeatedly. Never change, HN. Never change.
> 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. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Also, Apple has a much bigger market share in the US simply because most of the world cannot afford an iPhone.
Oopps... They do exactly this.
This is not to defend Apple nor Google. But Epic is by no means better, just not as big as A/G.
When I see folks complain about this, I like ask "what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?" Zero is not a realistic answer as Apple does incur costs to run the app store. Moreover, they're entitled to make a profit off the marketplace they created and support. So what's a reasonable percentage?
> what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?
That's an interesting situation, because if the game was free Apple would charge nothing. And the more they bang on the drum about consumer safety, the more I want them to charge a fee appropriate for payment processing.
If I was just arbitrarily setting the fees, I might go with something like 25% of the first 20 dollars per app per user, and then 5% afterwards.
If you really put the squeeze to them, the "natural" price would probably be a bit below cost for them, because the availability of apps is a selling point for their high-margin phones and tablets. That is why they are willing to host free apps, after all. (Although even then they take the developer fee)
Let's put that % difference into perspective. Say you have an annual fee of $10. The first year, your users pay Apple $3 (you make $7), but after that for every user that subscribes you only pay $1.50 (you make $8.50). You're saying that Apples should only charge $1. You're arguing that fifty cents is the difference between life and death of your business? Really?
That's not how it works.
I doubt Epic would be making much complaint for 15% (since the app has been out more than a year). They suggest 12% after all.
The 15% is for subscriptions and nothing else. And it's on a per-user basis.
What I'm trying to show is that once you accept zero is not reasonable (and most rational people accept this) and then explore the actual $$ difference between what Apple charges and what you think is reasonable, the differences are really small. Normally when I ask folks this, the difference comes in between 0.05 and a $2 depending on the purchase price. For a 0.99 app we're talking about $0.05-0.20 difference. Life is too short for folks to get worked up about that small of a price difference.
EDIT: this comment aged well: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.epicgames....