Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#141

Post by screamingninja »

iosjunkie wrote: post #102

This hard for me to understand. Apple hasn’t changed its approach their wall garden in ages. The consumer market decided to reward that model with adoption of Apple products.

Market adoption is more than a function of ecosystem openness. Blackberry commanded a large chunk of the market back in the day, maybe or maybe not because of the value they generated for consumers, but definitely because of the network effect. Several factors at play here.

Worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#142

Post by snakeyjake »

FredPret wrote: post #19

Perhaps a hardware engineer can help me out here, but I don't think Apple makes an unreasonable margin on the iPhone. Overall they make 26% [0]. Really quite reasonable considering highly-developed proprietary software is bundled with the device They make a lot of money because they sell * a lot * of iPhones. [0] https://valustox.com/AAPL

For practically any hardware startup if their margins aren't >33% they will fail to scale, wither on the vine, and die.

My employer makes space hardware and our overhead R&D expenses are so high that if we made 26% margin we would be bankrupt in a year.

So I think ~30% is probably a minimum floor to shoot for.

Just looked it up and Samsung Electronics has a margin that has ranged from 30% to 46% over the last couple of years.

I think the majority of people on HN are software guys who are completely oblivious to the challenges of building physical items that exist in the real world which is why your comment is downvoted.

That and beyond its stated purpose it seems that HN exists to allow people to complain about Apple in a public forum.

What makes all of this so strange is that large software vendors often have astronomical profit margins that hardware companies can only dream of. SAP (~70%) MSFT (~70%) TEAM (>80%)

https://ycharts.com/companies/SAP/gross_profit_margin

https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/gross_profit_margin

https://ycharts.com/companies/TEAM/gross_profit_margin

Perhaps it is good that software companies have such high margins because if they didn't HN would be flooded with stories about how every company they get hired at goes out of business and management is clueless.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#143

Post by bigyikes »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #97
Nifty3929 wrote: post #44

Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally. That's a pretty big stretch to call it a monopoly. There are many non-apple phone options that many consumers easily avail themselves of. And at least one other OS choice as well. All of these are fully supported by the entire ecosystem of telcos. Seems like bullying to score political points to me.

Standard oil was at 64% when it was broken up in 1911. Absolute market share isn't the only factor that goes into determining monopoly. You also get different numbers from different definitions. Apple controls 100% of the iOS market, or ~80% of the mobile subscription market, etc.

“Apple controls 100% of the iOS market” as an argument sounds like satire lol. What point does this make?

Is the implication that Apple should allow iOS on non-Apple devices? There is not a single hardware company in the world that would integrate iOS to the degree that Apple does. A requirement like this would immediately enshittify Apple’s brand.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#145

Post by FullyFunctional »

kmeisthax wrote: post #111
lokar wrote: post #18

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

When the iPhone App Store first launched, Steve Jobs claimed[0] the 30% was to cover the cost of certifying software as functional, well-designed, and nonmalicious. Part of it was an ego thing too: he didn't want people fucking up apps and making his pet project look bad, so early App Review focused on a lot of UI polish things in order to make people think iPhone software was just inherently better than Android. Eve…

To add more evidence to your point: SJ loved wall gardens and consistently fought against extensibility. The Apple II only got extension slots because the other Steve insisted. All of the compact Macs have very limited to no extensibility.

It's so ironic that Apple was pushing the (open) Web apps in the early days of the iPhone (out of necessity of course).

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#146

Post by Workaccount2 »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #48

The point the suit misses is that one can simply buy an Android phone if they like. Millions of people literally do every year. Choice already exists.

If you want to have a functional social circle in the US, choice doesn't really exist.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#147

Post by CPLX »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #48

The point the suit misses is that one can simply buy an Android phone if they like. Millions of people literally do every year. Choice already exists.

Here's the first paragraph of the actual lawsuit. So no, I feel like they probably didn't miss the point that Android exists:

COMPLAINT In 2010, a top Apple executive emailed Appl e’s then-CEO about an ad for the new Kindle e-reader. The ad began with a woman who was using her iPhone to buy and read books on the Kindle app. She then switches to an Androi d smartphone and continues to read her books using the same Kindle app. The executive wrote to Jobs: one “ message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch. ” Jobs was clear in his response: Apple would “force” deve lopers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform. Over many years, Apple has repeat edly responded to competitive threats like this one by making it harder or more expensive for its users and developers to leave than by making it more attr active for them to stay.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#150

Post by andrewmutz »

gnicholas wrote: post #13

> The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company. As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to brows…

How do you think they would spin Messages interoperability as security or performance?
Post reply on HN