[vatueil]

It's true that iOS has a smaller share of the market globally, including many parts of Europe, but this overshadows the fact that iOS is almost on par with Android in the United States (44.3% to Android's 54.5% as of May 2018), probably higher among affluent users, and the leading mobile operating system in other countries such as Britain: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

I feel this is often overlooked in discussions where users from certain areas where iOS is less prevalent don't understand the perspective of users from other regions where iOS is more popular.

[bilbo0s]

>(44.3% to Android's 54.5% as of May 2018)...

???

Doesn't that mean iOS has the minority market share?

[delinka]

A minority/majority distinction is unnecessary. If the market share is significant and can be shown to harm enough consumers (and especially if the behavior can be shown to harm even users of competitors' systems), then there still could be a decision in favor of consumers.

[zepto]

10% lower than the next competitor, and less than half overall.

Not a monopoly.

[jp555]

But definitely an iOS monopoly.

[scarface74]

And Nintendo, Somy, and MS have monopoles on their stores. Just like if you don’t like what one console offers you are free to buy another one, if you don’t like what’s available for iOS, you are free to buy an Android.

[tokyodude]

4 wrongs don't make right. Nintendo, Sony, and MS should also not be allowed to have monopolies on their stores.

[scarface74]

And now we are redefining “monopoly”. This has been going on for 30 years. The console manufacturers have had lock out chips on their cartridges, specially made disk, etc forever.

[kd5bjo]

Not forever. This all started with the death of Atari, which was commonly blamed on poor-quality 3rd-party games ruining their reputation with consumers.

I haven't looked into the history enough to judge whether this perception is accurate in hindsight. Like most things, I expect it's a lot messier than the popular narrative.

[jp555]

Yep! Monopoly just means there's only one supplier of any commodity. It does not mean there are no alternatives.

A patent is a government-issued monopoly.

[scarface74]

In that case you can define monopoly however you want.

You could say that YCombinator has a monopoly on posts to HN.

[jp555]

The definition of a monopoly is when there is only one seller of something. That exclusivity can be achieved in a number of ways such as patents, trade secrets, or some other monopoly moat.

[jimktrains2]

> Nintendo, Somy[sic], and MS

You don't need to purchase games directly from Nintendo, nor music or games or video directly from Sony, nor are Sony Videos only playable on Sony devices, nor do you have to only install Microsoft "blessed" executable for Windows.

[dwaite]

You realize that Nintendo controls the title signing keys, their own App Store, and the physical manufacturing of cartridges right? They also require merchants to sign contracts saying they will not have a posted price below the retail sale price without approval.

I fail to see how saying you don't have to purchase "directly" from Nintendo matters.

FWIW, a similar setup to Playstation (you seem to have conflated Sony, which makes your point confusing considering that Sony has other subsidiaries that publish music and video). Playstation has a music and video store which will give you media DRM locked to your console.

Finally, Microsoft has an App Store which distributes "blessed" executables. There have been several editions of windows which only allow applications distributed through this store to run, such as the first iteration of the Microsoft Surface that ran ARM. There is speculation that this move is what prompted Valve to release their own Linux distribution, because Steam would be severely impacted if they no longer had an ability to run their own store.

Luckily for Valve, those limited distributions haven't made much headway.

[jimktrains2]

Yes, I realize that for console gaming you need to be "approved" to write games.

However, my understanding is that this suite is about apple abusing the app-writing monopoly to also let only them sell apps, which is why I thought the console game analogy was sound.

As for merchants, I'm sure second hand stores and those at flea markets have signed all of these contracts. /S

Yes, I was sort-of referencing multiple arms of Sony. Sorry if that complicated things.

Yes, I know Microsoft has a blessed app storeb however, like Android, you can still install your own, unsigned executables or use another app store (there are some more recent package managers for Windows iirc? It's not really what I deal with.)

I remember the issues with the arm based surfaces. Iirc one of the current selling points of a surface ia that you can run any software on them.

I think this case will be interesting because there are platforms that come close to, but don't have quite, the control apple does over both who can generate applications as well as who can sell them. Where those platforms evolve 8s directly related to the outcome here I think.

[scarface74]

No, but every game that you buy that runs on any of the consoles have been preapproved by the console manufacturers and each game has been cryptographically signed by the manufacturer - even those sold on disc.

You don’t have to buy music from Apple. Music you buy hasn’t been wrapped with DRM for a decade. You can buy movies from Google, Amazon or Vudu, download the Movies Anywhere app, connect the app to your various accounts and they automatically show up as iTunes purchases (completely legally), there is an Amazon Video, Google Play, and Vudu app available for iOS. You can go to the Amazon store in your web browser and buy a digital video just like you can buy anything else from Amazon.

We are talking about consoles. Just like the other console manufacturers, you can not sell a video game on disc that has not been approved by MS and without paying MS a licensing fee to run on the XBox.

[zepto]

No. Not an iOS monopoly either. Look up the definition of monopoly.

[jp555]

Apple is the only supplier of iOS devices.

"A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly