Hacker News Reader

Comment by mey | Hacker News Reader

Under US law, it would be anti-competitive to use market control to stifle competition. I agree on your point about android, but you should be able to see what the software supports. Of course a court would need to decide, IANAL etc

View on HN

I disagree about Android. It's helpful to know whether some particular app you're purchasing is going to lock you into one platform or the other. Why should you have to leave the app store to investigate? What's the point of suppressing interoperability? Companies should be rewarded for interop efforts, not punished for it.

Nah. The pebble complements an iPhone whereas android replaces.

The Pebble replaces an Apple Watch, however.

An important point is that its the other way around, Apple Watch replaces the Pebble.

Exactly. And while I do think this is a shitty thing of Apple to do, I can't help but feel some Schadenfreude as well, given Pebble's treatment of Microsoft[1]. I'm also wondering if this kind of thing will happen to app developers who support other watch/band manufacturers on multiple platforms? There are a lot of fitness bands out there with multi-platform support.

[1]Microsoft took on the bulk of the financial and research hurdles in bringing Pebble support to Windows Phone, but the Pebble CEO said more or less "fuck you, I hate Microsoft because reasons" and shuttered the deal: http://www.windowscentral.com/pebble-microsoft-and-what-coul...

My guess is this article is either false or Apple re-examines to allow "watch" mentions on iOS app store pages.

Apple doesn't have control of the smart phone (or phone) market. Having control of the iPhone market is not considered monopolistic.

> Having control of the iPhone market is not considered monopolistic.

...and in an hypothetical lawsuit this will just turn in favor of Apple.

But they do have exclusive control of the distribution channels of apps for iOS. That's a monopoly.

That's a monopoly but it's not an economy monopoly. You have a monopoly over where you live, but that's not an economic monopoly. Monopoly is not a magic word. The FTC has very strict standards for when something is considered a monopoly. It's not the same as the general definition.

Well, sure, they have control over their own platform. Monopolies are about markets though, and Apple is hardly a monopoly in the smart device app market.

"Control" is not the relevant test, market power is, and the prime test for market power is having the ability within some (even small) range to increase prices (or possibly more generally increase price-to-feature mix) without sales moving to competitors. Its not an easy test to apply, and its possible for more than one player in the same general market (e.g., smartphones) to have market power, or for a player that isn't absolutely dominant -- or even the #1 seller -- in a market to have market power in that market.

Without having done any kind of structured data gathering and analysis, my intuitive impression is that it is not all that unlikely that a finding of market power for Apple in the smartphone market could be supported, and that therefore anticompetitive leveraging of its position in that market to build a stronger market position in the smart watch market could be an antitrust violation.

In antitrust cases, much of the game is in delineating the bounds of the relevant market. Apple would argue for it being really wide, as you have done.

One of the other comments here argues for it being "the market for iOS apps", which is far narrower, and seems way too narrow to me. If Apple built the device, and the OS, and the marketplace, of course they're going to have a monopoly there. Just like Walmart has a monopoly on things sold at Walmart.

A definition of the market that seems sensible to me would be the "mobile device apps" market. There, Apple is one of two players with any significant market share. It's not a monopoly, but it's probably enough "market power", in the antitrust sense, to draw scrutiny from regulators.

> Just like Walmart has a monopoly on things sold at Walmart.

No, not just like it. Walmart does not exclusively sell goods that require a Walmart product to use. That distinction makes the comparison not very similar at all.

IMHO the trade-off for creating anti-consumer walled gardens should be that you define the market in which you are subject for anti-trust cases.

If you have set yourself up as the sole gatekeeper for selling apps in your walled garden, you accept legal responsibility in that role to maintain a level playing field. If you don't like it, don't put up the walls and compete at being the best flower in open parkland.

> If Apple built the device, and the OS, and the marketplace, of course they're going to have a monopoly there. Just like Walmart has a monopoly on things sold at Walmart.

I'm not sure that this is as innocent as it might sound. Walmart exercises plenty of market power, unethically if not illegally, to make sure that it has a monopoly on some of the things it sells. (By way of comparison, would you expect that, say, Target of course has a monopoly on things sold there? Maybe you would, and I've misunderstood your language.)

Apple does have their own smart watch, though, and seems to be using their influence over the iPhone market to pressure the auxiliary device market.

I'm not a lawyer, but isn't that roughly compatible to the Microsoft/Netscape situation?

It's compatible with what they did in the eBook market which drove up prices for eBooks and killed off some eBook businesses.

Which businesses were these? I thought the plaintiff was Amazon.

In the case, yes. There were ebook markets that had to shutdown as a result of the 20% in-app rule.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com