Apple files legal challenge to EU's Digital Markets Act
reuters.com
reuters.com
I develop internal apps for small companies. Apple still forces each update - to an unlisted app - to go through a review process.
Google on the other hand have just told me they need to collect my address, phone number, and ID documents next year or they will delete my developer account.
I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, wait weeks for reviews, and have my personal data collected & sold, because I distribute private software to people who use one of the two vendors that make up 99.99% of the market.
“Ohh it’s not a monopoly because your clients could just carry around a lenovo running linux instead of a mobile phone”. How is this argument still passing the bar?
Apple/Google are a duopoly, and at least in the US, being a duopoly is legally fine so long as you don't collude on pricing.
"Apple/Google" isn't a single entity, neither has anything close to complete control of the US mobile-device market, and they do seem to actively be opposed to each other in many areas rather than being some sort of cartel.
monopoly | məˈnɒpəli | noun (plural monopolies) 1 the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service: the state's monopoly of radio and television broadcasting. • a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service: passenger services were largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies | France's electricity monopoly, EDF.
In case it's not clear from the definition, notice the first example's deliberate pluralisation; "largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies".
Your definition is both wrong, and I suspect made in bad faith anyway.
The example is, presumably, referring to a single entity that provided “passenger services” between two destinations, and no other entity provided passenger services between those destinations. But since there could be multiple sets of destinations that single entities provided all passenger services for, then there would be multiple monopolies.
Which does not contradict kemayo’s post.
There is no reason to use monopoly (in this context) when more accurate vocabulary exists, such as duopoly or oligopoly.
Which is precisely the point. Take as "destinations" the two parties to any given transaction, i.e. a particular software developer and a particular user. If the user has an iPhone, they can't use the Play Store, or Samsung or Amazon or anyone but Apple. The developer has no choice in this, even though they're the one paying the fee and being subjected to opaque and arbitrary rules.
Within each smartphone operating system, Apple has a monopoly on software sold for their devices.
But for Android, I thought it is trivial for end users to avoid the Play store for any software they want? If so, I would not describe that as a monopoly.
It's possible but not trivial. In particular, the stores have a network effect where users won't install them if they've never heard of them (remember you have to give your payment info to a store), and developers have no use for a store without users. Google also makes a lot of features dependent on Google Play, which makes it hard for OEMs not to include it with their phone, which might otherwise have allowed the store they did include to reach a critical mass. So Google Play still has >90% market share on Android, even if the alternatives aren't explicitly prohibited.
> passenger services were largely in the hands of state-owned _monopolies_
My clients have employees who essentially have two ecosystem options when buying a smartphone - Apple or Google.
I, as a developer, then have to bend to the will of both of these corporations which, no matter how they compete on other things, are just as bad as each other when it comes to developer treatment.
Monopoly, duopoly, whatever - it’s crazy. Why am I uploading my fucking ID to Google, giving them my phone number, which they say “they may contact periodically to ensure the account is still active”, because I distribute private software to a private organisation?
If I had an airline as a client and I wanted to change the upholstery on a plane, I don’t think I’d need to have the changes approved by Boeing/Airbus in addition to having my personal data (home address, phone, and ID) sold and used to target me with advertising.
Re: Google, given that you're privately distributing software to a private organization, couldn't you just sideload it onto the Android devices in question? It seems reasonable enough to for them to want you to have a developer account if you're using their infrastructure to distribute these things. But my (minimally informed) understanding is that, unlike Apple, Google doesn't force you to have a signing certificate from them or anything for the software to even run on a device.
This explains that they are a duopoly, not a monopoly. However I do agree they are both a monopoly:
You're making a 10$ app targeting Californian 10-20 yos. They have 95% Apple devices (I don't know, I'm completely spitballing, but you get the idea.). You develop the Apple app, everything is going good, you have 1M users, Apple decides to cut you off on a whim (not saying they are doing it, but they are allowed to since they are legally not a monopoly). What does this "free competition between Apple and Android" is going to do to you? Re-target your game to SWE who are more likely to have Androids?
The Unity ruling seem to be clear to me that that the US law doesn't consider it a monopoly, and I acknowledge that. I can understand where this comes from. But it feels like laws need to be updated to take this new kind of situation (a local per-person monopoly impacting multiple distinct markets) into consideration.
It's worse than that. Suppose you have an app where neither of the platforms has a disproportionate share of the users -- they're evenly split. Now one of the platforms makes trouble for you. They want to ban you, or impose unreasonable restrictions, or charge high fees. Can you switch to the other one? Pit them against each other?
No, because the other one can't reach those users. It's not like having a Walmart and a Target across the street from each other, where any buyer can trivially switch to the other store if either of them stops carrying the seller's goods. It's like having a Walmart in Florida and a Target in California and if Target kicks you out, there is no other way to reach your customers in California because they're not going to move to Florida just to shop at Walmart.
Calling this "not a monopoly" because Walmart and Target are both operating in the United States is rather missing the issue.
It's pretty clear that they have an oversized influence and control over mobile app distribution too...
Monopolies, in and of themselves, are not illegal in the US.
Leveraging monopoly position to gain unfair advantage in markets outside the monopoly is illegal.
The analogy that is persuasive to me for this particular case is that Apple / Google are excluding people from their app stores in the same way that Kroger is excluding people from its grocery store shelves.
If you ask this question about "Clorox bleach" the answer is obvious. Any other brand of bleach is a perfect substitute and the only reason Clorox can demand a premium is if customers value the brand as an indicia of quality, i.e. they're paying to get bleach they trust not to be watered down or contaminated in a bottle that doesn't leak, not because there is no other source to get bleach they can use with their washing machine.
For the iOS app store that is not the case. If you have an iOS device, you have to use the iOS app store. It would be as if you had a Kroger-brand washing machine that could only use bleach from Kroger, e.g. because they sell it in cartridges that authenticate with a microchip. At that point Kroger would have a monopoly on bleach for those washing machines, and that product would be its own market because there is no competing substitute.
For this not to be the case you would have to be able to install apps on iOS devices via Google Play or some other competitor with non-trivial market share. Because the relevant concern is whether there is a viable substitute that the same people can use for the same purpose.
And yes, this means that if you cordon off something that might otherwise have been part of a larger market by using DRM, you now have a monopoly on the thing you erected a fence around and should be subject to antitrust enforcement.
The answer is corruption. I believe it’s plain obvious by now.
Ah. One can dream.
(edit: I mean from PC to IOS and Android)
My point was less related to the cause-and-effect, and more focused on the undeniable need for user control. Apple is the reason why the Digital Market Act exists - go read it, you'll very quickly realize that the language targets them. It also (rightfully) implicates Microsoft and Google, but it very explicitly paints Apple's relationship with the iPhone as a "Gatekeeper" situation. The reasoning should be obvious; OEMs don't deserve that level of control. Apple could implement all of their meaningful features competitively, as-is, without being the sole trusted distributor of iPhone apps.
Plus, even if you love Apple and hate Europe, features like this let you meaningfully resist European mandates. If Europe demands that SMS apps have a backdoor (fancy that), Apple users would have options that aren't provided by Apple. In a world where FAANG is bought and owned by the US government and gets regularly subpoenaed for data, that might be an affordance you value.
This makes no sense. If Europe makes rules about backdoors or outlawing E2E, they will apply to every app store and every app, not just Apple.
The EU isn’t doing any of this to support some principle of end-user freedom. It’s all just a consequence of lobbying and politics. They aren’t going to do anything that reduces their own control.
I think the reasoning was pretty concise although throwing shade, referring to it as unhinged is uncalled for. I think I see this a bit too much on HN but bears repeating: your favorite trillion dollar company does not need to be defended. It is unlikely you'd be calling it unhinged if similar sentiments were expressed about Google, Microsoft or Facebook.
I would encourage anyone to try doing a fully 1:1 app in both web and native iOS for good measure to judge for themselves. Perhaps you could say 30% is a 'premium'; however after 1 year it drops down to 15%... objectively, I struggle to characterize the dev ecosystem as 'rent-seeking'
Mac app store has to compete with developers doing their own app distribution and we can see pretty clearly that its adoption is kinda meh.
They believe the App Store is one part of the total value of the iOS platform, and one which they chose to monetize.
And while the Mac App Store is a solid counter example to "do users value this?", the other counter-example is the Play Store, where, despite the availability of side-loading on Android, the Play Store is still, by far, the preferred way that users download and install applications on their Android device.
The Mac App Store has failed because Apple didn't make it good enough for developers to make it useful enough to users.
30% is probably too steep of a cut, but I don’t think it’s wrong for them to to take some percentage (the 15% rate they give to small devs who ask for it seems closer to reality).
This is also a strange argument. The "platform, SDK, and developer tooling" are actually funded by device sales because those things are inseparable form the cost of developing the operating systems themselves, which in turn is included in the device prices.
This can be seen in the difference in the rate those things improved between when macOS was the flagship platform and when iOS took that crown. All of that sped up dramatically after the App Store really took off, with AppKit largely getting left in the dust compared to its iOS counterpart UIKit and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The European legal system has not been captured like the US was by Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork) and the Chicago School (dogma: monopolies are a logical impossibility because markets are infallible). Thus this will likely only stall for a few months, I'm sure Apple knows that, but it's a few more months of those juicy App Store margins that are so essential to Apple's financials under the "Services" rubric.
I'm a huge Apple fanboy and I'm happy with the walled garden HOWEVER Apple begun engaging in rent seeking and missing out on innovation and I really, really want Apple to succeed because they are the tech company that cares about user experience over false metrics like megapixels and screen to body ratio.
Apple's rent seeking on NFC already causes me bad user experience because when I'm not somewhere where Apple Pay is supported, I miss out on banking apps that support NFC.
Also, governments(UK, EU, USA - all of them) are eager to turn the tech companies into a police and there's a war in Europe and political turmoil all over the world where you and hundreds of millions are at risk of falling at the wrong side of the aggressive dominant political movements.
I'm sure Tim Cook and anybody at Apple wouldn't want to be the tech suppliers who helped governments to enforce policies that some time in the future might be viewed just as badly as the German policies around 1940s. At this very moment, Apple might believe that they are on the right side of the history but what happens if Trump wins in a year? What happens if the far right in EU begins dominating the politics? They are angry and they want vengeance, they go after people all the time. Maybe Apple was able to say F.U. to the UK and said it will not implement spying into its iMessage&Facetime services and leave UK if they have to but can they do the same in USA for example? Can Apple say no to Trump admin and leave the US markets if they decide to ban encryption so they can hunt down the "enemies of the state" and "dry the swamp".
Very dangerous times, no company should be in position to become the police.
But now they are too far gone in the money making, empire building side. I believe the culture that built the Apple we loved is completely dead now and all the people that were the keepers of that have either moved out themselves or got pushed out by management to make way for the new culture of ultra greed rent seeking.
I think it is naive to believe we can go back to what Apple was. It is a shell of itself and even the hardware products are somewhat nice but feel very bland and uninspired for the price (they also have a lot of performance/durability problems because of cost cutting, margin chasing). And this time there is not Steve Jobs to come back.
In my opinion it is better to see the objective truth, cut your losses and move on to another cheaper and more open platform. There is not much to expect from Apple, it's all downhill from here...
They are absolutely gatekeepers and have an absolutely unreasonable amount of control on devices they are not supposed to own anymore because people bought them.
I think they also should look into their behavior of forcing update, in order to make devices obsolete earlier by making them run slower even though they worked completely fine for everything that was required of them. I thought it was conspiracy theories but right now, just after the annual release and just after a mysterious new update with little information on what it is supposed to fix; my iPhone 12 Mini is starting to seriously lag both in Apple apps and 3rd party apps. Thats a very disturbing coincidence, especially since it's not the first time it has happened. By the way I am still on "old" iOS 16.7.2 because I don't trust Apple release anymore. In fact, if I could, I would go back to the iOS the iPhone was sold with; but you can't because Apple is selling their update bullshit narrative in their marketing. From where I sit there are a lot more cons than pros for the average user...