[JeffSnazz]

> Apple does not have a monopoly in that market

Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets, both monopolized by definition of private control over basic aspects like pricing and content, including mandating a private tax rate?

[willseth]

Those two distinct major private markets are inside platforms that compete with each other, so it's not clear what a monopoly means in that case. That's what everyone is trying to figure out.

A judge can't simply mandate a private tax rate and probably wouldn't want to anyway. Antitrust judgments typically try to remedy root causes limiting competition so the market can work out the rest, rather than try to guess some arbitrary "fair" rate that wouldn't be constant anyway.

[lxgr]

The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.

The duopoly of mobile app stores would not be nearly as problematic if it wasn’t also tied to a duopoly in phone OS vendors, one of which also tied to a monopoly in phone vendors, which is tied to a monopoly (quasi-monopoly? not sure what to call iMessage in the US) in instant messaging platforms etc.

[jacquesm]

> The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.

Which is exactly what RMS and like minded individuals have been warning about. Meanwhile Microsoft is working very hard to retro-fit this onto the remains of the PC market.

[kmeisthax]

You're both over and understating RMS's position here. He wasn't opposed to vertical integration, he was opposed to being told no. Vertical integration often means being told no, through not always through copyright means.

[willseth]

That's a pretty broad root cause. The problem is coming up with a remedy that can't be worked around or doesn't distort the market in other ways. It will be interesting to see what happens in Europe if/when they force Apple to allow side-loading apps.

[ethbr1]

The EU redress strikes at the core of the issue -- if Apple and Google are prohibited from monopolizing app stores and/or payment processing on their respective platforms (including via incentives, tying products to exclusive use, etc.), then their mobile OS/hardware monopolies loose a lot of their power.

[willseth]

The bigger question to me is to what degree will the platform owners be restricted from monetizing apps on the platform. Requiring apps to be installable at no cost to the developer makes a big assumption that platform fees are 100% rent. Some of the fee surely is, but if enough people are able to circumvent fees, it seems likely to impact the dynamics of the platform, e.g. If supporting 3rd party apps become less profitable, why wouldn't Apple and Google shift focus/investments to first-part apps and features and allow public APIs to languish?

[phone[phone]]

I personally think we need a United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.[1] ruling in mobile phone hardware.

Then Apple can produce their OS, Google can produce their OS, and handset makers can be free to choose what OSes and app stores to support on their phone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

[burnerburnito]

Of course, keep in mind US v. Paramount recently got sunsetted and it was decided it could never happen again :^)

[turquoisevar]

> The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.

Which is not illegal per se and, in most cases, such as Apple’s, not even subject to antitrust scrutiny.

Horizontal integration as a result of mergers is immediately subject to legal scrutiny.

Vertical integration by virtue of mergers can be subject to legal scrutiny.

Vertical integrations as a result of organic expansion are not subject to legal scrutiny.

From a US antitrust perspective, Apple is wholly in the clear as long as they don’t actively abuse their market power after they’ve gained their market dominance.

This means that Apple can be as restrictive and aggressive as it wants before it gains market dominance in the relevant market and maintains that stance as long as they don’t restrict after it gains market dominance.

This makes sense; in the US, they don’t want to punish success, and you are allowed to have an “innocent” monopoly. This also makes sense from the perspective of market-wide ramifications.

If you’d punish vertical integration or single-brand markets in general, then every start-up that automatically has a monopoly over its own products would be subject to punishment. If I develop a new smartphone tomorrow with its own OS and adopt Apple’s approach to the walled garden, I’d be immediately in trouble.

The fact that Apple became successful doesn’t change anything as long as that success isn’t gained by illegal means, like throwing my newly gained market dominance around.

The EU has a different approach to this, mainly through carving legislation that aims to target specific companies. Still, it remains to be seen if that can withstand adjudication by the courts because the EU courts aren’t very eager to condone targeting at this level and retroactively making things illegal.

In a general sense, it’s baffling to see how many people have trouble wrapping their heads around the simple premise that success isn’t punishable in and of itself and that you actively need to abuse your market dominance after you’ve gained it.

The rule of thumb is that if something is perfectly legal to do when you’re small, it’s also perfectly legal to maintain that behavior once you’re big, with very few exceptions.

This is precisely why Apple is always so restrictive when introducing something (e.g., App Store, no carrier bloatware, Apple Pay, commission rate, etc.) because they can always be more flexible. Still, they can never tighten the reigns once they’re successful.

Google tried this the other way around. Relatively open and permissive ecosystem. Now, they’re trying to close it up and bully other parties into doing what benefits Google; this got them in trouble.

Similarly, people really seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that “the iPhone” is just not the relevant market definition.

Courts almost never go with a single-brand market definition, because it almost never is a relevant definition and would open the door to ramifications across commerce, if only because pretty much every manufacturer has a single brand market and monopoly over it.

When determining the relevant market you want to include substitute products, both on the demand side and supply side.

Switching costs are a factor in determining the competitive pressure, but switching cost doesn’t mean that you can therefore exclude substitutions from the market definition, if only because there’s almost always a switching cost involved. Often times even very high switching costs exist, like a cancellation fee and switching cost can also be non-monetary like the time it takes to learn a product.

A lot of companies try to significantly increase switching cost to lock customers in. This doesn’t mean they don’t have competition in their market or that their acts are illegal.

The court has found that Google/Android is a suitable substitution both on the demand side as well as the supply side. People can switch to Android if Apple (indirectly) increases the costs of apps and developers can also switch if the cost of making apps becomes too high.

Keep in mind that the courts don’t care if an average consumer or supplier would do so, only if a marginal consumer/supplier would. In other words, if a small but significant amount of people would do so, typically 5-10%.

[singron]

These mobile platforms are two sided markets. They only compete on one side for users. They don't compete on the other side for app developers since developers need to use both platforms to reach all users since each user is exclusive to a single platform at a time.

[JeffSnazz]

> clear what a monopoly means in that case

Well, it's bad regardless of the concept of monopolies. Private markets are not a good sign.

[JeffSnazz]

> inside platforms

This just means private market. There's nothing special about the term "platform" that changes the feudal nature of this. The tenants compete but the operator has coerced exclusion on collecting its tax. This private market has a single operator offer access on non-negotiable terms against which no other entity is able to make a competing offer. If that's not a monopoly, it's certainly far worse to everyone but the owner of the market.

I chose to buy a device, it's mine. What on earth are you doing meddling with what i do with it, apple? Your taste in apps sucks ass and you charge the poor app developers 10x the value you provide. Being forced to use the appstore actively lowers the value of my phone.

I don't appreciate this attempt by large corps to just rewrite the meaning of ownership and markets without giving us any of the benefits of a world without property or a centralized marketplace. The people here who defend it disgust me.

How is this not straightforwardly a vertically owned market with full price controls to which we can only rent space at exorbitant cost and little return compared to an public market?

We all know the reason: it drives profits and our index funds. Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, even if that represents us all getting collectively sold up river. Which should remind you of about a thousand other problems this country faces.

Hate this useless state for real

[rurp]

Because the two giant companies that own those markets like it this way, and they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.

[seanmcdirmid]

I guess you mean Apple and Nintendo right? I'm not sure if Switch is really so comparable to an iPhone though.

[bmitc]

Apple and Google

[grecy]

> they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.

They paid lawmakers to keep the laws the way they want them to be.

Just so we're clear, if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery.

[JumpCrisscross]

> They paid lawmakers...if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery

No, they did not and no we would not.

If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.

[hex4def6]

>If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.

https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=apple&sort=A...

$140,000 to a John Harris Whitmire. Apparently he's "an American attorney and politician who is the 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas" according to Wikipedia.

[JumpCrisscross]

That's a campaign donation. (Mayors in mayor-council governments aren't technically lawmakers, though Houston has a strong enough mayor that it's semantic at best.) You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.

I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.

[lmm]

> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.

A personal election campaign is presumably something in your personal interest, and money is fungible.

> I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.

On the contrary, giving in to the sophistry that says that this particular system of organised and regulated bribery is somehow not bribery is intellectual dishonesty. Yes there are some relevant differences between this and other forms of bribery, but the similarities are stronger.

[grecy]

You said:

> If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker

And then

> That's a campaign donation

Use newspeak and call it whatever you want, it is VERY clear MONEY WAS PAID TO A LAWMAKER, which is EXACTLY what you wanted evidence of. This very clearly means you need to cut me a 6 figure cheque.

Again, other countries very clearly call this bribery, the US just invented a new word for it.

[UncleMeat]

> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses.

You absolutely can. You can loan money to your campaign and charge interest on that and then have donors donate to your campaign to repay your debt. Brought to you by the conservative wing of the supreme court in FEC v Cruz.

[jacquesm]

In any other country this would be bribery. If it happened in another country the USA would call it bribery...

[pipes]

Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.

[JeffSnazz]

> Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.

It's up to us to make them give us better tools for us. This isn't a natural thing that just happens. I don't give a damn which company succeeds in the end so long as the consumer is fairly represented.

[legitster]

It's not even clear that breaking up the app stores would be good for consumers or developers. Having to load an app onto 15 different app stores to capture the market sounds like hell.

The only ones who would really benefit are other large corporations like Epic.

[mvc]

As a mere consumer, I would prefer it if "capturing" was difficult. Society should not be optimized for those who want to "capture" entire markets.

[threeseed]

And Epic only cares because they want to run their own private, exclusive App Store.

[hobs]

Because it actively harms the users of the market, and we'd control the regulation in our favor if big companies didn't brainwash everyone.

[hot_gril]

It's both. They lobbied to keep it that way. I'm a little glad they did.

[stale2002]

> Or because those two companies created those platform

This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws.

> I don't see why they owe it to other companies

That owe it to the countries that they are based in to follow the law, or move their entire company else where, if that's what they choose.

[semiquaver]

> This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws.

No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law. We are in a thread discussing a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.

“This is completely irrelevant if [this decidedly false fact]” is not really a useful statement. Wishcasting that courts will misinterpret the law is not the way forward, the way forward is new laws.

[stale2002]

> No legal precedent supports

Gotcha. Unrelated to my point though.

My point was that someone saying "well it's their platform, they can do what they want!" Is making a bad argument.

If someone wants to make a good argument, instead of a bad one, then you would have to start talking about what a monopoly is.

But whoever built the platform is simply an argument that is unrelated.

> is not really a useful statement.

It absolutely is useful, because it focuses on the question that matters.

No matter if you think that Apple is a monopoly or not, of which there are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides, the fact that Apple built it just doesn't matter.

Talk about the things that matter, not unrelated points.

> a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.

If you meant to imply that this is a final verdict on if Apple is a monopoly or not, then I would recommend that you re-read the original ruling of the California judge.

The California judge was very clear that the verdict only shows that Epic failed in their arguments, not that Apple is decidedly not a monopoly.

[semiquaver]

You’re mistaken. The district court did in fact find that Apple does not possess monopoly power in any relevant market. Here is the ruling from the 9th Circuit: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2...

Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement. Its rulings on law are binding throughout the 9th circuit. While “possession of monopoly power is a fact question”, this denial is likely to be the final say for quite some time on questions of whether Apple possesses monopoly power in markets related to app stores, which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android.

Epic attempted to argue that Apple has monopoly power in “iOS games” which was rejected since you can’t just arbitrarily narrow your market definition until you find a monopoly.

[JeffSnazz]

> No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law.

I probably shouldn't have used the term. It's still a very negative sign about our future that's worth fighting.

[simiones]

> No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law.

The right way to look at it is "US law is not written in a way to recognize and break up these monopolies". By any common sense or economic definition, these are monopolies. That the legal definition is out of whack is a problem which will hopefully be corrected.

[semiquaver]

I agree, and said as much in the second part of my comment.

[shadowgovt]

For the same reason we act like there's such a thing as a "Right to bear arms" or a "common-law right to joint ownership of property with your spouse."

The law is arbitrary and highly path-dependent. But in the absence of the law, there's no "market" period, not as a government-protected legal construct. Without the law, Apple could just tell Epic to pound sand because they have the right-of-might to rotate encryption keys, release future versions of the iPhone that scan for Epic software using hardware-based solutions and brick the phone if they're detected, and drop OS updates that retroactively delete Epic games from user phones if they wanted.

I'm glad for the law that prevents that, even if it's the same framework that makes me act like there's a "mobile game market."

[johnnyanmac]

The important disctintion is that monopoly (the formal definition) is subtly different from monopoly (the legal definition). I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly, but legally speaking they haven't done much to pressure nor push out competitors.

That said, the arguable App Store monopoly (legal) is being challenged in the EU and it sounds like Apple is getting ready to relinquish a bit of that stronghold (apparently by giving the EU a different model of software or something. Still have yet to read the rumors in detail).

[lowbloodsugar]

>I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly

If Apple has monopoly here then Best Buy has a monopoly too. Everything you buy in Best Buy is priced according to Best Buy. You can't walk into a Best Buy and say "Oh, I already paid for it on Sony's website, so I'm just here to pick up the TV".

[johnnyanmac]

My above comment was talking about IOS and the mobile market overall (of which it has some half of market, give or take a percentage), not the App Store.

Even then, if we focus on stores: Google with multiple stores still does have a play store monopoly (formal, arguably legal given current lawsuits) on Android OS. And on top of that, the EU rulings with Apple mean your metaphor may not be as farfetched as you make it seem.

These aren't based on my opinions so much the fact that both OS are under legal fire. So I wouldn't dismiss this so easily.

[judge2020]

the entire iPhone experience is the product. While technically we know that other app stores can and do work on it (Cydia, Trollstore, etc), from a US legal sense there's no separation between the App Store and the iPhone being distinct things.

[autoexec]

> the entire iPhone experience is the product.

It seems like the "iPhone experience" is paying a ton more than you should have to, including the 30% price hike for in-app purchases. Since Apple is already a status symbol brand that might not hurt their image much, but at least this case helped to raise awareness about what people are buying into or have already signed up for with the iphone.

[judge2020]

I can guarantee you no apps will drop their prices 30%. When Epic pulled their stunt[0], 1000 v-bucks that normally costed $10 were only discounted to $8. They still pocketed $1, maybe ~=$0.68 after CC processing fees.

0: https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-epic-direct-payment...

[callalex]

Of course prices won’t drop because price is based on what people are willing to pay. However the actual creator will have up to 30% more funding instead of a rent seeker, which means the creator will have more margin to increase quality, which benefits the consumer.

[lxgr]

That's the crux of the problem: Current antitrust laws don't really capture it.

The EU realized that and just passed a huge new law/regulatory framework to address it, and presumably the US will be closely watching this space.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets

Are you talking about the App Stores?

[prophesi]

App Store and Play Store.