It’s fairly obvious that Apple invests heavily in the development of iOS, the Mac and the iPad and iPhone.
The people whose assets are being protected are the people sitting on large amounts of capital that they could invest in creating alternative platforms.
What would it cost to build an alternative?
$1BN? $2BN
Epic alone has vastly more than that available to invest, and there are many others who do too.
There is no reason that we shouldn’t have a third or fourth alternative given the 100s of billions of dollars sloshing around in these companies and in VCs.
That would create more jobs, and would put real competitive pressure on Apple and Google.
Letting a few middlemen siphon a few percent out of the App Store while degrading user experience will not.
Just consider for a moment what it would take to make an actually free Linux into a viable smartphone platform (as librem and pine are trying to do).
The answer is, very little for companies whose revenues are in the billions.
That would create the free market they claim to want.
There is no reason at all for companies and investors who think an open ecosystem would be good for them not to put $2BN into a joint venture to build an open Linux for mobile.
Except that they don’t want an open platform.
They just want a cut.