[CobrastanJorji]

The market is too small? Let's try comparing it to a more "conventional" market, like cable TV.

Total iOS app store revenue is somewhere within the neighborhood of $50-100 billion per year. That puts it roughly on par with the US's cable television industry.

There are about 100 million people using iPhones in the US alone. That's about twice the number of cable TV households in the US.

So, it seems like the market for iOS apps is similar to the market for cable TV, and there's also less competition, as I may have other options for getting TV shows, but I don't have any other options for getting apps onto my iPhone.

[jfk13]

But you had other smartphone options, and you chose to buy Apple's solution. In making that choice, you were not just buying a piece of general-purpose hand-held computing hardware, you were buying into to a specific, explicitly-curated ecosystem of software and services. Apple's gatekeeping role here was a significant part of the iPhone's value proposition. If that's not what you want, or if you think it is overpriced, why would you choose to buy it? Other devices are available.

(As someone who doesn't use either an iPhone or an Android phone, I don't really have a dog in this fight. Just an observer trying to see various points of view.)

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I don't care about Apple. You know very well what you are getting into if you buy their products or make these mobile apps. I do care about Google's bait-and-switch where running a "Google-free" Android is starting to be very problematic, a lot of apps just not being provided outside of Google Play, and/or not working without Google Services anymore...