[acituan]

> it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences.

By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics. That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work.

> That's called free market competition, not monopoly.

No. Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with, which integration of a software application store with a physical phone is. We are talking about a $50bil/year market that is not free.

[pdonis]

> By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics.

That's why I put "market failure" in quotes. If you think anything fixable by users changing their preferences isn't a "market failure" by your definition, fine, then the Apple situation is not a market failure by your definition.

> That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work.

No, the government does tons of interventions/regulations to favor particular market players, under the guise of "fixing market failures". In almost all cases, these interventions/regulations actually make things worse overall, but of course they make things better for the particular market players that were favored.

> Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with

Throwing around buzzwords proves nothing. Apple created the iPhone and its app store. It can do whatever it wants with them because it owns them. It has the market share it has because users have freely chosen to use its products instead of those of its competitors. That's the essence of a free market. The fact that you don't like doesn't make it not a free market.

[acituan]

> Throwing around buzzwords proves nothing

These are technical terms, not buzzwords and calling them so doesn't make much of a counter-argument.

> That's the essence of a free market

No it is not. You seem to equate free market with unregulated market which is not always true. Markets fail to self-regulate in the absence of open competition, which is what precisely the App Store on iPhone is. Nearly half of the mobile phone apps in the US comes from a closed market. Imagine instead Apple owned half of the roads in the US and stipulated what businesses could use those roads, e.g. only certain grocery store's trucks can deliver goods over them. That would be far from a free market too.

[pdonis]

> These are technical terms, not buzzwords

The technical definitions of these terms don't support the claims you are making using them, so you're not using them as technical terms, you're using them as buzzwords.

> You seem to equate free market with unregulated market

Not at all. A free market is regulated by the voluntary choices of market participants.

> Markets fail to self-regulate in the absence of open competition

So your definition of "open competition" is "Apple can't choose the terms on which it is going to provide products and services that it built itself". By that definition, "open competition" has nothing whatever to do with "free market", since in a free market every market participant gets to choose the terms on which it is going to provide goods and services that it built itself. Forcing market participants to provide goods and services on terms they would not choose for themselves is not a free market.

> Imagine instead Apple owned half of the roads in the US and stipulated what businesses could use those roads

Roads are not the same as smartphones or apps; roads are exclusive in a way that smartphones and apps are not.