[darklion]

How do you figure? Apple has a minority market share in celluar phones in literally every country in the world, and other than the US, doesn't even hit 25% market share.

Microsoft, at its peak, held a worldwide monopoly of over 90% of all desktop computers (I believe it was in the mid 90s).

How is Apple's (not a) monopoly worse than Microsoft?

[danielbarla]

I suspect parent poster's use of the word monopoly is slightly off here, but they do have somewhat of a point. It's not the wideness of Apple's market share that is in question, it is the depth of the control. Apps can literally go extinct overnight seemingly on a whim (we don't like this type of tech for reason X, or that type for reason Y, etc). The IE situation was an abuse of MS's dominant market position, but the cost of developing a browser and distributing it for free was high enough that MS had to cherry pick one or two areas to bulldozer into. Apple's cost of doing the same is nil, as they don't have to compete, they can just disallow access entirely.

[wayneftw]

iPhone market share is very close to 50% in the US. You can't have a successful app launch in the US without making your app available on the iPhone. Apples policies affect the entire market, especially in the US.

If they're not already a monopoly in the US, then they might as well be since they have the same market control as a monopoly player. Also, a strict majority market share is not required for a company to be considered a monopoly. It's up to the courts to decide. [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...

> In determining whether a competitor possesses monopoly power in a relevant market, courts typically begin by looking at the firm's market share.(18) Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred," they have demanded a dominant market share.

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18618127/apple-pepper-sup...

> The plaintiffs, meanwhile, will argue that these alternatives don’t matter. “The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of smartphones doesn’t mean they don’t have a 100 percent share of the distribution of iPhone apps — which they absolutely do,” says Rifkin.

[darklion]

> “The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of smartphones doesn’t mean they don’t have a 100 percent share of the distribution of iPhone apps — which they absolutely do,”

Yes, that's true, but it's not a particularly meaningful or insightful statement. That's defining the market in terms of the answer you want. Any company has a 100% market share if you define the market as "things that only that company can do".

"The fact that they have a [less than] 50 percent market share of operating systems doesn't mean [Microsoft doesn't] have a 100 percent share of Windows -- which they absolutely do", says Captain Obvious.

The question is, has there been a detrimental effect for customers?

Practically, I don't think the answer is as clear-cut as Rifkin wants it to be, because (at least to me), the drawbacks of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity) have to be weighed against the benefits of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity).

[wayneftw]

> the benefits of a single-vendor app store (of which there are a significant quantity).

I'd say the great majority of those benefits are going to Apple.

There's nothing that Apple does in their app store that a third party app store owner couldn't do. Anyone can curate apps.

As a customer of the Apple app store, I've absolutely experienced the detrimental effects of Apple's behavior. For one thing, I can't build software for my own device because Apple is too concerned about losing control. There are also whole categories of software that I simply cannot have because Apple won't let them be sold in their store.

They already lost the anti-trust case to decide if they can be sued again by customers. I hope they lose the next one too.