Just following this thought then the remedy will be forcing Apple to allow alternative OS and firmware on their devices, allowing consumers to choose what they do with the device hardware they purchased?
I’m not a subscriber to the “if I choose to buy a product, I get to dictate product design decisions for the company” school of thought. Buy it or don’t. If you want X there is no right do demand Y turn into X.
> There is a choice between very few phone manufacturers, and even less mobile operating systems.
I don't think that the manufacturer assertion is true at all. You can go to any random online store and get dozens of brands and manufacturers. It just so happens that popular demand focuses only on a hand full of manufacturers who are outcompeting everyone in the free market.
Take a look even to Android's market share. You have four manufacturers with double digit market shares, and a couple of dozen entriee. Is that what you call a monopoly?
Why should they have to allow it? My smart TVs and video game consoles never allowed it, except that short lived Linux PlayStation. Nintendo is pretty hostile about reverse engineering the switch.
But those are gaming and entertainment devices, not general-purpose computing devices that everyone relies on for day-to-day work and life.
A good way to think about it is this: if Windows was as closed down as iOS, and took a 30% cut on every application purchase, would regulators have intervened?
Those should allow it too. Them setting a bad precedent doesn't mean we should continue to abide by it, just that there's more work to be done undoing it.
I think that would be the right decision, to me that makes more sense than forcing Apple to allow any app to be installed on iOS or allowing alternate stores.
Ownership and security are at odds. The only remedy would be forcing Apple to allow the owner of the device to run whatever they would like on it, unfortunately this does include malware.
In the broadest sense, an app that "can not cause harm" can't do anything useful. To the industry's dominant players, "causing harm" means empowering the user to venture outside their walled gardens... or even to see outside them.
So, no, sandboxing everything in sight isn't a useful solution. Your sandbox will just imprison us all.
Buying a phone from another vendor is only viable if Apple/Google didn't try to lock you in. Of course we know that's not true - you can't just go elsewhere and that's by design.