It's true that nobody has to buy an iPhone, in that they can choose any of the one competing platform. "There's literally a single competitor" isn't a very strong argument against regulation, though.
And in the case of both devices (Apple and Android) you can still flash your own "competing" OS on the hardware. It's far easier to do this on an Android device than an Apple one, but the hardware is separate from the software you're running. But there are multiple mobile OSes not named Android or iOS.
What qualifies as a competitor, and what responsibility does Apple or Android have at creating new competitors? What actions are Google or Apple taking to actively stomp out mobile based OSes? Didn't Mozilla give it a shot? Didn't Ubunutu put out a mobile version of their OS? The lack of competitor for OSes seems like an odd argument to make. They exist even if they don't have marketshare, and there is no requisite business structure behind an OS in order for it to be a competing software. There are options. They may not be the single most accessible, and they may not meet your needs, but they exist.
What does this mean? Late 90’s Microsoft had more than 85% of the desktop PC market.
Early 2020’s Microsoft still has more than 85% of the Desktop PC market.
There is simply no comparison.
Apple doesn’t control the market. They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
They do have products that a lot of people think are category leading, but that isn’t the same thing as having ‘control’.
They also make a lot of profit, because people are willing to pay more for those products. But this is true of companies who focus on quality, regardless of scale.
This part is entirely irrelevant in the EU
Similarly, Apple and Google have leveraged their duopoly in the mobile operating systems market to prevent competition in the mobile application distribution market
Apple (52.4%) and Google (47%) control 99.4% of the mobile operating system market[1]. That's certainly much more than the 85% of the market that Microsoft had.
> They don’t have anything like a monopoly.
Colloquial definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[2]:
> 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.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
What does the Android vs Apple vs Featurephone marketshare look like?
For the most part they aren’t trying.
Building a new mobile platform is expensive - probably billions of dollars of investment - and takes years.
There are actually quite a few companies who could do so if they wanted - e.g. Facebook, and yes, Epic.
But there is no reason to suppose they would be successful in any less time than it took Apple or Google.
There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
That isn’t actually going to result in more platform competition.
Apple did nothing to create Fortnite, but they want about a third of the revenue from Fortnite. Epic did not create the iOS platform, and they are not asking for any of Apple's profits from the iOS platform. So your characterization of who's wanting profit without doing the work seems completely backwards to me. Apple's demands here are essentially rent-seeking.
> There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.
As far as I know, Epic did not prevent people from paying through Apple's integrated payment platform. They simply offered an alternative.
> My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.
> Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.
Your suggestion is that if somebody wants to sell things to users who happen to be on smartphones without paying into the duopoly's protection racket, they should simply develop their own hardware supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, phone operating system, mapping and GPS software, email software, ditto for every other piece of software that is table stakes for a phone — and do all of this to a level of quality sufficient to compete with companies whose primary businesses are doing these things — and then finally develop whatever it was they wanted to sell in the first place.
This is not a reasonable position, and even if Epic is in a position to do it (which I'm not sure if they are), most companies aren't, and it is not reasonable to demand every company develop its own phone.
It's also bad for users, because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
It is much more reasonable to just not allow smartphones to be the 21st century equivalent of a company town where employees are paid in scrip.
Obviously not. It’s not a protection racket.
I’m suggesting that it would be better for consumers if we had more competition at the platform level - then we wouldn’t have a duopoly, and we would have more pressure for the platforms to compete an innovate.
You list a bunch of technologies that have already been developed and can be integrated. I said it would take a billion dollars, so we’re on the same page.
> because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.
Don’t be silly. Popular apps are available on more than one platform.
Yes, there would be exclusives - games especially, but that is no different to how it is now.
For all your complaining, you seem to be arguing very hard that we should be stuck with the duopoly you claim to dislike.
We deserve better than forcing both users and developers alike to deal with a bunch of additional middlemen within the duopoly.
We are only stuck if nobody thinks it’s worth creating an alternative. The ‘duopoly’ has only existed for around 5 years so far. It’s bizarre to consider regulating such a short lived phenomenon instead of encouraging new entrants, particularly when there are so many deep pocketed companies that want a piece of the market.
We’re not talking about a random video game company. We’re talking about Epic, a multi-billion dollar transnational enterprise that could easily afford to invest the time and money Apple and Google did to build their platforms.
Epic is vastly more profitable now than Apple was when they developed the iPhone. Let’s not deceive anyone that they are some small games company.
If you want to guarantee that we continue with the duopoly, the best way to do that is to take away the incentive for companies that could compete, to actually do so, by giving them a piece of the duopoly’s revenue stream.
Apple is not a supplier. They only sell directly to consumers. They don’t even try to make their app store available on competing phones, even if it is technically possible.
Nitpick: Apple Music competing with Spotify is remarkably similar to the Microsoft case. (Epic's case is weaker.)
Apple Music is available in the Google Play Store but I don’t know of any credible accusation that Apple has tried to get Google to kick Spotify out.
You: Microsoft did not get prosecuted for being popular.
How does that response follow at all?