Apple has a monopoly under many framings, now it comes down to wether a judge agrees or just kicks away Apple opponents.
How so? Google has 80-90% of the search engine market and Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market and used that disadvantage competitors in the nascent browser market.
The bottom line with Microsoft was: should Microsoft be allowed to use its monopoly position in operating systems to essentially force customers to take your web browser, whether they wanted it or not? It certainly wasn’t okay for Microsoft to use the threat of canceling HP’s ability to be a Windows’s OEM (and therefore destroying their PC business) if they made Netscape Navigator their default browser.
People forget how dominant Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were back in the MS-DOS days; Microsoft used Windows to make Word and Excel the dominant word processor and spreadsheet.
Apple’s worldwide market share is barely 30%; it’s closer to 50% in the U.S. It’s also not illegal to disallow 3rd party developers to “break” your platform, especially when they entered into a legal agreement with you to not break your platform.
There’s nothing illegal about controlling a successful platform and deciding who and what can be present on that platform. Game consoles have long operated the same way but that seems to be okay.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly position in either phones or computers; if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else. That wasn’t the case with Microsoft back in the day and it’s pretty much not the case today with web search, since it’s realistically not an option for a business to not be available on Google search or to ignore its advertising platform that reaches billions of users.
A lot of percentage are thrown around in your reply, but all of these are relative to a specific market you define. Wether it’s the relevant market definition is up for grabs.
You should have a look at the Apple vs Epic fillings, where Epic came with a pretty different perspective on which definition should be taken into account. They of course lost as the US judge sided with Apple’s definition (while Korea came with a different verdict…), but that’s at least an indication of how important that definition is. “30% of device share” or “80% of in-app purchases” are completely different perspectives.
> if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else
Customers are mostly irrelevant. To get back to your Microsoft example, no developper was stopped from developping for linux, nor were customers stopped from buying barebone machines, or Apple, or beOS, or mainframes. The issue was Microsoft making backroom deals with the vendors to make Windows alternatives pricier and non competitive. This makes it worst for customers as a result, but that’s the result, not the core issue (I’m referring here to the EU rulings). Definition of a anti-trust issue should be about how a player distorts the market by pressuring other business, not wether the customer has theoretical choices or not.
How so? Google has 80-90% of the search engine market and Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market and used that disadvantage competitors in the nascent browser market.
The bottom line with Microsoft was: should Microsoft be allowed to use its monopoly position in operating systems to essentially force customers to take your web browser, whether they wanted it or not? It certainly wasn’t okay for Microsoft to use the threat of canceling HP’s ability to be a Windows’s OEM (and therefore destroying their PC business) if they made Netscape Navigator their default browser.
People forget how dominant Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were back in the MS-DOS days; Microsoft used Windows to make Word and Excel the dominant word processor and spreadsheet.
Apple’s worldwide market share is barely 30%; it’s closer to 50% in the U.S. It’s also not illegal to disallow 3rd party developers to “break” your platform, especially when they entered into a legal agreement with you to not break your platform.
There’s nothing illegal about controlling a successful platform and deciding who and what can be present on that platform. Game consoles have long operated the same way but that seems to be okay.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly position in either phones or computers; if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else. That wasn’t the case with Microsoft back in the day and it’s pretty much not the case today with web search, since it’s realistically not an option for a business to not be available on Google search or to ignore its advertising platform that reaches billions of users.
reply