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Comment by joemi | Hacker News Reader

That's not how monopolies work, though.

It's absolutely how they work. If there's only a single grocery store in town (and for whatever reason others can't be opened), is that somehow not a monopoly even though there are several pharmacies and hardware stores?

You can buy whatever phone you want. Many of them can run multiple OSes if that’s what you want. There is not a single mobile platform in town.

When Ford sells me an F150 I don’t cry about them having a monopoly on their Sync platform. That’s not now monopolies work

If you don’t like the town with only one grocery store, you can move to any other place you want.

And what about the other mobile platform (singular)? That one’s also making it harder and harder to sideload apps.

That's not a good analogy for the situation. A better grocery-based analogy would be if there's only a single Bob's Grocery in town (and for whatever reason more Bob's Groceries can't be opened) but there is a Sally's Groceries in town. Then Bob's Groceries isn't a monopoly. The only thing Bob's Groceries is a monopoly of is Bob's Groceries, which is a useless tautological argument.

Apple has neither a monopoly on phones nor on app marketplaces.

They don't have a monopoly on phones. They do have (something like) a monopoly on app distribution on the iOS platform.

Maybe monopoly is not the right legal category, and maybe what they are doing is perfectly legal and always will be, but I don't think the fundamental point can be argued away with analogies like these.

Bob's Grocery likewise has a "monopoly" on distribution of products in their store. They have no control over Sally's Groceries.

Still not any kind of monopoly

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