[kodablah]

The rising tide lifts all technological boats, so it makes little since to compare today with historical water levels. Things can be overall cheaper compared to the past, but still anti-competitively hamstrung. If you can compare to costs of things in the past, you probably won't find any technology more expensive.

[tptacek]

That's a colorable argument on a message board, but in court, if intervention is to be premised on harm to consumers through overcharging, Apple's opponents will need to present empirical evidence, not counterfactuals. Be that as it may: all the evidence available to me suggests that mobile app stores have drastically reduced the cost of retail software to consumers.

If anything, what I've seen is the opposite concern, which is that app stores make prices too favorable for consumers, at an untenable cost to the developers.