[horsawlarway]

I have no problem with Apple offering the services they do in their app store for developers who'd like to use it.

The issue is that it's not really an honest choice - This company has decided that they'd rather not use it, and they have effectively lost access to the platform entirely.

Basically - What you're saying is that Apple should have the legal monopoly over building channels to market for iOS (because they prohibit any other form of distribution). I don't believe that should be true. I'd actually say that's exactly what put Microsoft into a world of pain for IE, and they were actually much more open about it - a user was free to install a different browser on Windows, a user is not free to install a different app store on iOS.