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Comment by 684568 | Hacker News Reader

I mean what else is Europe going to do? Develop its own successful products?

Look, either you force everyone to be open to competition and interoperable or you allow everyone to lock down. How would you like all other manufacturers to do the same as Apple? BMW, VW, Ford, Mercedes, GM ec all have their own petrol stations, their own approved roads, their own approved tyres, their own approved parking spots. LG, Samsung, GE, Panasonic etc each require their own electricity distributor, their own wiring and plugs, for the washing machine their own approved clothes, for the fridge and cooking appliances their own food and cookware. Each emplyoyer requires you to buy their approved apparel and use their own aplhabet and writing system. And YOU get to pay for it all.

I want Apple to have competition, but I also don't want Apple to lose its unique advantages, which mostly come through the tight vertical integration between hardware and software.

If I don't want tight vertical integration, I could easily buy any number of Android devices.

EU regulators want to compromise vertical integration, which means depriving consumers of a legitimate choice many of them make.

> EU regulators want to compromise vertical integration

No. Apple somehow convinced people that: "our products work great with each other" *must* somehow involve: "we won't let competing brands work well with our products". Slick marketing!

The EU's warning involves the iPhone's interoperability with other watches and headphones when it comes to "notifications, device pairing and connectivity" (quoting Euronews). For example, you can reply to texts from an Apple Watch, not a Garmin (it works fine on Android). That's an arbitrary software restriction.

Nobody is forcing you to buy an iPhone.

That's difficult, without openness or protectionism. How do you compete with iOS without supporting iOS apps, iCloud, and iMessage blue bubbles? The switching costs (practical, and psychological) are too high.

Android competes very healthily with Apple in the EU!

Android is at nearly 70% OS market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe/

[I say this as a keen iOS user]

Android isn't competing with iOS. Apple users stay Apple users, mostly, and Android users stay Android users. Android manufacturers are competing with each other, but iPhones are their own thing.

I'm an "Apple user" that switched from iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch to Android alternatives; while remaining a happy user of Macbooks.

The statement doesn't make sense because people don't keep 2 phones in their pocket, or 2 smart watches, and rarely have 2 tablets that are actively used. And people definitely move between ecosystems. Choosing one excludes the other, and they have equivalents for each product type.

Hence they are direct competitors.

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The real problem is that the mobile OS & app store market is a stable duopoly.

"How do you compete with iOS without supporting iOS apps, iCloud, and iMessage blue bubbles?"

You build good alternatives for each of those.

That rarely works with monopolies.

Ask Microsoft, who tried developing Windows Mobile after the market was taken over by iOS and Android. Or who still tries competing with Chrome without much success, despite it being pushed on Windows as the default, with annoying settings and ads included. Nevermind that they gave up developing their own engine because they couldn't keep up.

Microsoft has been doing various flavors of mobile OS development since LONG before iOS or Android. The first release of Windows CE was back in 1996, roughly contemporary with PalmOS and Apple's NewtonOS.

Indeed, which makes their failure even more glaring, strengthening the argument that the mobile OS market is now an impenetrable duopoly.

Nokia and BlackBerry found that out as well.

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