[sveme]

Isn't it great that you're heading for a hard brexit, then? If the competition is no level-playing field anymore, how should a local company be successful?

Your points have been addressed above already, if Apple had a dominant market position, the EU would have handled things differently. And Apple has been fined by the EU before as well.

[cageface]

As Apple fans always rush to point out, Apple owns most of the really profitable users, so if I'm developing a new app or website I have to play by their rules and can only rely on technologies and protocols Apple supports.

Raw numbers don't tell the whole story here.

[repolfx]

Obviously, the EU deciding to terminate all cooperation with the UK because of an ideological "all or nothing" approach is a tyrannical and cult-like way to run international relations.

However if the alternative is having to deal with the EU Commission then yep, I guess hard brexit is the next best alternative.

The reason the EU doesn't have any local mobile companies isn't do to with Android or Google's licensing terms. The EU had a very successful mobile firm and it shot itself in the foot over and over so badly it disappeared, because its own competitor(s) to Android just weren't good enough. Nokia was hopelessly out-engineered by Silicon Valley and in hindsight it would have done better to admit that, and become an Android OEM itself. It wouldn't have had to cut any deal with Google. It already had Ovi Maps and its own app store infrastructure. It could have done an Amazon and adopted Android without any strings attached.

[bkor]

> However if the alternative is having to deal with the EU Commission then yep, I guess hard brexit is the next best alternative.

They're currently headed towards not really exiting the EU. Once they looked into the details they determined that the drawbacks were outright lies (350M GBP/week) and the benefits are huge. It might even end up as a paper exercise.

[sveme]

OT, but what kind of Brexit would you have wanted?

[repolfx]

Well it's hard to say that because the EU is the wrong way to organise European cooperation from the start. European cooperation should be done the way it used to be, as many multi-lateral agreements and organisations that are only loosely affiliated or not at all.

But most of the European political elite want to unite the continent under a single government instead. Given that, the best kind of Brexit would be one where the UK is no longer a part of this, and can sign various unlinked bilateral treaties to continue cooperation in the areas where there is agreement, and discontinue in areas where there are disagreement.

This makes perfect sense - agreement on everything is rarely possible, so collaboration on the areas where people do agree is the best you can do. It's also exactly what the UK has proposed repeatedly. However the EU refuses to allow it, exactly because if people were offered that alternative the EU and associated gravy train would cease to exist tomorrow.

[sveme]

Well, I personally am in favour of the way the EU acts as a permanent umbrella to organise cooperation and according to the latest polls, the majority of people in most countries are in favour of that too. Otherwise, with each country acting on its own, they would be picked apart by the much larger players, the US, China and Russia.

Maybe the UK media points a wrong picture of the mood in the EU, but I seriously doubt that it would cease to exist if your alternative would be put forward. But that's something all Brexiteers tell themselves repeatedly, over and over, like a mantra.

[repolfx]

I'm sure it would cease to exist. The EU has lost every referendum on further integration held in, what, the last 15 years? The EU political elites are notorious for telling countries that voted wrong to vote again, or just ignoring them.

If every population that's asked rejects the EU's vision what on earth makes you so sure that a comprehensive alternative wouldn't be popular?

Also there's no such thing as "picked apart" in the sense you mean, i.e. outside of military strategy. Nobody is picking North Korea apart despite that it's a world pariah. If a country doesn't want to collaborate with another country or accept its terms, it doesn't have to - the idea that cooperation is a form of warfare is exactly the mentality that the EU has, and is why it's so desperately dangerous and problematic as an organisation.