[recoiledsnake]

Interesting, because the comments on other HN posts read like "There is no tablet market, there is only an iPad market", "Apple makes 80% of the money in the cell phone market, Apple is the only one making any money", "If you want to make money selling apps, the App Store is the best since it has the paying customers, Android is full of cheapskate freeloaders who want your app for free and install adblock". With the obligatory links to Asymco and Gruber to "prove" it.

Now it's kind of funny to see some of the same people make the argument in comments here that Apple has no significant marketshare or dominance of anything.

[Retric]

There is no contradiction, Apple 'owns' the high end market where people actually pay for apps. But, as a percentage of overall phone / tablet OS there well under 40% so it's hard to call them a monopoly.

[politician]

So... they have a monopoly on the end of the market where there is money?

Why is this a distinction?

[clarky07]

because if linux had 60% marketshare and ms had "all the paying customers" nobody would have had a problem with the things they did. just because Apple's competitors don't know how to make money doesn't mean they don't have competition.

[sbuk]

You can't have a monopoly on a portion of a market. The clue is in the first two syllables.

[pyre]

It depends on how you define the market. When Sirius and XM merged, did it become a monopoly on the 'satellite radio' market or did they just become a larger player in the 'radio' market?

[netcan]

This is all getting very murky.

Apple has a monopoly on the "market" (portion) that pays for apps. That's not as clean a definition of market as you would want. The defining characteristics of this market are also (arguably) inconveniently dependent on the offending practices. IE iphone user pay because it is easy, because there is a single payment provider, because users don't have to worry about a cheaper option some roundabout way, etc. etc.

Then there is the problem that any platform, regardless of overall marketshare is something like a little local monopoly. Our definitions of monopoly don't really work here but platforms can still exhibit a lot of what anti-monopoly rules are trying to prevent.

[sbuk]

Doesn't matter? Were they abusive? Did the new enterprise fix prices or stop competitors entering the whole market (Apple are not stopping consumers from signing up for Dropbox, just not through the App Store)?

[hahainternet]

I find it hilarious that you instantly switched arguments as soon as an example that showed you were incorrect was put forward.

Apple are being abusive, few would deny this. Few have. Why are you?

[politician]

Does a market exist where no money is being exchanged? If you are an abusive provider of things that you give away, are you a monopolist? If there are two providers of some product X where the first provider gives it away and the second provider sells it, is market share measured in units a meaningful metric of the economic activity generated by this product?

[zzleeper]

BTW, in antitrust terms, they do have a monopoly in that segment, and could be charged for abusive practices.

[sbuk]

No. They don't. It is impossible to have a monopoly in a market segment and under the law, it is perfectly acceptable for a business to control a small portion of the marketplace.

[anotherthrow]

Why do you say this?

A market segment just is a market according to the dictionary definitions. And legally, a lot of EU competition law concerns exactly how one individuates such markets/market segments.

Can you draw out what you're claiming more?

[sbuk]

Not really as its very simple assertion. Apple do not have a monopoly. They control a segment of a rather large, and competitive marketplace. To say that they have a monopoly over their products is not a cogent statement as every manufacturer has such a 'monopoly'. The EU laws that you are referring to concern the abuse of a dominant position in a market, something which Apple as we are all too often reminded do not have.

The fact remains semantically and legally that you a monopoly of the segment or niche of a market is not possible. A company can be abusive (which is what you mean when you say monopoly - something which in and of itself isn't illegal), but unless they control the significant majority of the whole the it is legally not an issue. Morally is different debate.

[anotherthrow]

> To say that they have a monopoly over their products is not a cogent statement as every manufacturer has such a 'monopoly'.

Well, I don't know what you mean by 'cogent', as that's generally taken to be a property of arguments and not statements (there may be loser notions, but as I say you'd need to spell out what one you intended). However, the statement that 'Apple have a monopoly over Apple products' is a true statement, which is all that matters to establish the semantic point. It might be trivial, but it's trivially true.

If I might try a helpful suggestion, it seems to me your confusion is arising because you're thinking something like 'if x is a market segment, then x isn't a market'. But of course that doesn't follow, as one can individuate markets at different levels (more or less fine grained).

[chalst]

If consumers face substantial barriers in switching to a rival then there might be an antitrust case. From the point of view of competition policy, the idea of "market for this" vs. "market for that" can be misleading

[sbuk]

What barriers are they facing? As an owner of an Apple device, can they not sign up for Dropbox at all? Not being able to signup for a competing service that can involve a financial transaction is not anticompetitive if the consumer has other means, whit they do. Indeed if the consumer goes to the Dropbox website using Safari browser of their own volition, the can sign up immediately.

The issue here is one of sensationalism. As a community, we a far too quick to jump to the "$corp is evil!" conclusion without looking for a reason, however ridiculous it may seem. We, as a community, are too cynical for own good.

[recoiledsnake]

That only means that if you're a developer, Apple's App Store is a monopoly since that's where the people are that pay for apps. "Just go elsewhere" doesn't work because they can't make money there, like Netscape did have Unix and Sun CDE versions but they were of no consequence compared to the Windows one.

[sbuk]

Apple have no monopoly in the mobile app space and the iTunes app store is noway, shape or form a monopoly in any sense of the word. There are (is) other options that have a significantly higher market share that developers can go to if they don't like Apple's terms.

[elithrar]

> Now it's kind of funny to see some of the same people make the argument in comments here that Apple has no significant marketshare or dominance of anything

> "Apple makes 80% of the money in the cell phone market, Apple is the only one making any money"

Making the majority of the profits is not a monopoly in the Microsoft Windows sense, which I assume is what we're talking about here. iOS does not have that in the handset market (esp. if you include Symbian!), and the tablet market is very young.