| > I posited there is a cost to user in being locked into a single app store. And the person to judge that question is the user, not two people having an argument on an Internet site. And not app developers either. > You claimed if there was such cost, we necessarily would have seen decrease in user demand. I said that if there is no discernible change in user demand, that means the users, who are the ones in a position to judge, evidently don't see a significant enough cost to change their behavior. Any change in the cost-benefit relationship will change the behavior of some users. Sure, they won't all switch from iPhones to something else, but some percentage of them will. > Being able to give away things for free come from the giant profits accumulated through monopolistic vertical integration. No, it comes from having some other source of revenue besides the users of the thing that is being given away for free. "Monopolistic vertical integration" might help in getting other sources of revenue, but it's not the root problem. The root problem is that the actual users of the service are not the paying customers, someone else is, so the incentives of the provider are skewed. |