| The truth is because there are only two stores in our example, it really does make sense. Imagine there were only Walmart and Costco and literally nothing else, even small business. Now someone violates Walmart’s rules for a specific item in the store, and they not only ban that item, but also ban every item they sell. Here’s where it gets dystopian. In all platforms that allow competitive stores, the fees settle way down from 30%. Look at windows, epic, steam. 5-20%. That’s what a competitive price looks like. But because there exists literally only Walmart and Costco, they have 0 incentive to compete. That’s abuse of market power, and exactly what Antitrust concerns itself. The tired analogy of “it isn’t a monopoly” just doesn’t hold up in two dimensions: there are only two major players, both disallow competition within their marketplace, and yet in alternative platforms (game consoles, windows, linux) you have alternative routes to delivery that show us the “real cost” of managing a platform. Apple and Google are running their companies with 0 foresight. It’s a shame that Tim doesn’t have the foresight to pre-empt this, it’s terrible brand strategy and they are supposed to be good at it. |
If Apple was allowed to make stupid mistakes like making it very hard to develop Unreal Engine games for iOS, or being jerks in general, then there would be much more justification for building a 2nd market or switching to a 2nd market.
I'm not pitching for no regulation, but the unintended side-effects of force Apple to play well with others is that there is now _no need_ for a competitor who is more open...