I think Apple's cut is egregious but at the same time, they're not a monopoly. My main gripe is that they're behaving as if they're bringing value that the developers are riding on, when in reality nobody would buy iPhones if it weren't for the value that many developers are bringing to the platform, often at no cost to Apple.
Further, the market for "smartphones" is not Apple vs Google. It's Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola vs LG vs Sony. Those are smartphone makers. At the 50%+ marketshare, Apple has more than double the market share of it's next biggest competitor.
Further, as pointed out elsewhere you don't have to have a monopoly for being sued for anti-competitive behavior.
Conversely, you can have a monopoly and commit abuses and get away with it in the pro-business United States. Microsoft is noticeably intact, despite what we may have wanted to happen in the late 90s.
Apple realistically has more to fear in Europe.
In this case, the market came together to produce a solution much better for society than the state could have concocted, or predicted: high quality open source software. We can all be thankful that Netscape’s market for $40 web browsers (actually buggy groupware by that point) wasn’t protected for any longer than it should have been, because the pressure of Microsoft’s dominance drove the market towards demanding more symmetrical rights via entirely new approaches of software development and distribution across desktop applications, server and embedded operating systems and software, and web-based platform-agnostic applications.
Source? The sources I’ve seen has Samsung much closer to Apple than that (30-35% vs 40-45%).
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
Counterpoint: the consistency, convenience, and safety of the App Store and broader iOS platform is part of why so much money is spent there.
[EDIT] but yes I think their cut should be lower. They are definitely delivering a ton of value to developers, though, and part of that is created precisely by some of the restrictions that developers love to complain about.
This is a really interesting point. Whether this is the reason or not for me, but I make and sell apps on both platforms and the identical app, identical price sells 4 or 5 to 1 on iOS vs. Android.
Their strategy also adds a lot of consumer value. I use an iPhone specifically because I understand the tradeoffs between freedom and reliability/security, and I go for the reliability/security. Not everyone wants a second job playing sysadmin on their smartphone.
And there is also the fact that the government doesn't classify a trust[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.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
It's a fairly difficult comparison to make though because you have to compare a single companies vertical integration to the non-integrated supply chains of several other companies.
Anytime the discussion around Apple’s take on subscription revenue comes up there are always comments from people that they wouldn’t even mind paying a premium price just to have the convenience of having all their subscriptions managed in one place, and free of company-specific dark patterns for unsubscribing.
Fortnite money has nothing to do with Apple. If they would only charge the processing fee and whatnot there would be no debate. Compare it to paying Apple for subscribing to Netflix/Spotify/Amazon. What is their accomplishment in this case?
If it were up to me, Apple would charge more like 3% and keep all other factors the same in terms of strictly shutting down developers who try to skirt the policies.
Would you care if apps could offer two subscription methods, the Apple one with no-BS and the developers' one with a lower price (but potentially shittier experience)?
It's a genuine question, as you thinking about the app store consumer experience.
Personally I like the choice. Pay with cash and get X% off, or use a credit card :)
Of course there is. You can argue that it shouldn't be the deciding factor here, but you can't argue it doesn't exist at all.
iOS is basically a geographical region. It's like saying there isn't a California market because it's instead the US market. Or that you can't be considered a monopoly because people can move. Yes, they can, but there's significant burdens to that movement. And it turns out that burden was enough to consider things like utilities to be monopolies. Is the burden on switching between Android & iOS high enough to be considered a barrier to free competition? I'd say yes, it is. As such, iOS is its own market in which Apple is abusing monopoly position.
As is well known with anti-trust lawsuits that depends on how one defines market.
As is less known, anti-trust lawsuits don't actually require monopolies.