[GlobalFrog]

As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant, whereas having prefered treatment because of your monopoly at any stage is. Some are mentioning the App Store being the root of the monopoly, and that is probably true. But speaking from a legal EU point of view, especially as the EU is stating their case in the streaming music area only, wouldn't the simplest way for Apple to get away with it be to externalize 'enough' Apple Music and to have them pay the same fees as Spotify? Therefore, the only way to restrict anticompetitive practices here would be as others like Epic are doing: by proving the monopoly in enough different domains covered by the App Store? Would the antitrust laws in the US similar, that is proving monopoly has to be done by domain, or would a more global view be possible there?

[SllX]

> As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant

You want to go back and re-read the comment I directly replied to where bullet point 1 was the EU (hypothetically at this point) making determinations about who was in what market and laid the foundations for bullet point 2 based on its own flawed presupposition and then tell me that the timeline is irrelevant?

I didn’t point this out to make an argument against the claims that Apple has any sort of claim to monopoly status (or that the EU has any basis for making that claim), but that any legal argument at all made on that foundation would crumble because bad facts make bad law.

> whereas having prefered treatment because of your monopoly at any stage is.

Except Apple does not have market dominance, let alone a monopoly, in Music or Phones.

> Some are mentioning the App Store being the root of the monopoly, and that is probably true.

Not having market dominance, let alone a monopoly, in phones, software, or software retail and distribution, that is actually not true.

They have a monopoly on iPhone features, including the App Store, insofar as the iPhone is researched, developed and sold by Apple as a cohesive product, and it does not have out of the box functionality that Apple does not add themselves. You might as well claim Google has a monopoly on YouTube channels or that Amazon has a monopoly on Whole Foods shelves; more accurately, that Nintendo has a monopoly on the eShop and Sony has a monopoly on the PlayStation Store. It was a bad argument 13 years ago, and it is a bad argument today that doesn’t even pass the sniff test.

> especially as the EU is stating their case in the streaming music area only

Why only streaming music? Spotify was originally an upstart competitor to iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, and the iTunes Music Store was originally a competitor to record stores.

Music itself is part of the larger News and Entertainment industry where ultimately the resource is someone else’s leisure time and you want to be the one to fill it. Spotify knows this; that’s why they experimented with video and they’re huge into podcasts now.

> wouldn't the simplest way for Apple to get away with it be to externalize 'enough' Apple Music and to have them pay the same fees as Spotify?

Why should they have to? Because they have a competitive advantage? Businesses always look to edge out their competitors by accumulating advantages. Spotify was successfully out-competing iTunes, so Apple acquired Beats and folded Beats Music into iTunes and called it Apple Music.

Spotify has almost 5 times the global market share of streaming music as Apple does, and has almost as many EU subscribers as Apple has total subscribers, that is globally, give or take 10 million.

What Spotify is doing here is trying to lower their costs because they have massive overhead in licensing fees, same as everyone else that licenses music. Part of their growth story is exactly being on the iPhone at the right time to capitalize on its growth, and being featured in the App Store. In order to compete, they offer an ad-supported tier from which Apple sees exactly none of that money. I don’t think you can even subscribe to Spotify from within the iPhone app anymore so Apple is still footing the bill for distribution and any money that Apple sees from prior subscriptions is now at the lower 15% rate that all subscription apps see for customers after their first year subscribed.

> Therefore, the only way to restrict anticompetitive practices here would be as others like Epic are doing: by proving the monopoly in enough different domains covered by the App Store? Would the antitrust laws in the US similar, that is proving monopoly has to be done by domain, or would a more global view be possible there?

I don’t know how to parse this. Clarify and I’ll get back to you.

[musicale]

> You might as well claim Google has a monopoly on YouTube channels or that Amazon has a monopoly on Whole Foods shelves; more accurately, that Nintendo has a monopoly on the eShop and Sony has a monopoly on the PlayStation Store. It was a bad argument 13 years ago, and it is a bad argument today that doesn’t even pass the sniff test.

Apple:iPhone:App Store :: Nintendo:Switch:eShop

[gamblor956]

Antitrust law focuses on the restraints of trade. Companies that are minor players in the market have been successfully pursued for antitrust violations, because it does not require a monopoly, or even market dominance. Monopoly law was the origin of antitrust law, but today is merely a subset of it. (For example, bid rigging, market allocation, and price fixing are all antitrust violations.)

Antitrust generally requires a substantial market position, and the use of that market position in one of a number of enumerated anti-competitive manners (the list differs between the U.S. and E.U.). One antitrust violation both the U.S. and E.U. have is the abuse of market position in one market (i.e., mobile devices) to anti-competitively establish market position in a different market (i.e., streaming music).

Apple has approximately 1/3 of the EU market for smartphones, which is a substantial enough market position for a single market position that antitrust concerns come into play. (Legally, the comparison is not Apple vs Android; it's Apple vs Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc.) Note that Samsung, etc., would have similar antitrust concerns if they tried to launch their own streaming music services in the same fashion as Apple did.

Note that if Apple had required an industry-standard fee for processing iOS subscription payments (generally, 2% or less depending on territory), or didn't require Spotify to use iPay, then there wouldn't have been any antitrust issues.

[musicale]

I think it's interesting that Microsoft got into hot water in 2001 for (among other things) including Internet Explorer in Windows, thereby abusing its dominant position in the OS market to dominate the browser market.

Microsoft very sensibly argued that including (and indeed integrating) a web browser was a logical evolution of the modern operating system.

In 2021, Apple (Safari/iOS/macOS) and Google (Chrome/Android/ChromeOS) would presumably agree with Microsoft's position. Mozilla might take issue.

I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft hadn't been dissuaded (somewhat at least) from completely integrating Windows and IE in the early 2000s. Perhaps Windows would be a lot closer to ChromeOS. And I wonder if Microsoft would have been more competitive with Google, Apple, and other companies if they hadn't been the target of antitrust action.