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Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

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Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#101

Post by mprev »

hkhanna wrote: post #86
braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

> They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones. I have a different perspective. Many of my different friend groups use the "group messaging" feature on their phones. If everyone is using an iPhone in that group, it defaults to using iMessage. I switched to Android about 18 months ago, and it broke all of the group text message chains I had because some of…

Is that a sign of Apple’s dominance, though? It just feels like inertia because the existing solution worked well enough for your friend group.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#102

Post by unishark »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #79
braythwayt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopsony is a slippery concept. If I tilt my head just right, we could be discussing the way WalMart purchases products. They sell a product in their store, they decide they want a certain margin, and then they tell suppliers to meet a certain price target if they want their products in WalMart.

> Monopsony is a slippery concept. How so? If you want to buy X, and there's only one person selling X, then that person is the monopoly seller of X. If you want to sell X, and there's only one person buying X, then that person is the monopsony buyer of X. You can't swap the adjectives around; monopsony buyer is redundant in the same way monopoly seller is. You can think of them as the same word with different agreem…

I think the problem is in its asymmetric use. Here they are defining the "market" in question as a subset of the actual market for smartphones or software, restricted to only that software in the Apple store. Surprise, Apple dominates their own store. As if customers don't have alternatives, when of course they do.

If you swap the logic around it would be like calling Apple a monopoly because they are the only seller of iphones, a contrived market that is actually just a subset of the smartphone market.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#103

Post by swebs »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #63
nobodyshere wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be just enough to allow people to install third party apps without having to use app store.

Lol, how is that working out on Android ?

Pretty well. What exactly are you implying?

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#104

Post by im3w1l »

braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

Apple is the smaller company in a duopoly market. There are not enough players in the market that dissatisfied customers can easily up and leave.

The real harm we see Apple doing is that they allow the dominant groups in society to suppress anyone else. This became especially clear during the Hong Kong protests, where they banned apps protestors used after a request from Chinese authorities. Because of the lack of choice in the market, consumers have little choice but to live with whatever is imposed on them.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#105

Post by palijer »

braythwayt wrote: post #67

Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument: 1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it. 2. Apple is a monopoly/monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &c. Which one is is? Apple is like T…

>They don’t tell developers that apps must be iOS-exclusive to be in the app store.

Apple recently rejected our app submission as we mention our Android version within our app settings. They don't demand you be iOS exclusive, but they damn well try to make it difficult.

That release was just a minor version with some fixes, the text had been in the app for years.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#106

Post by pjc50 »

simonh wrote: post #88
mikece wrote: post #77

Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…

I just can't get my head around this argument. To write software for a computer platform, shock horror, you need to develop and test it on that platform. To develop software using Apple's OS, services and libraries, you need to buy that OS, those services and those libraries that Apple sells. I don't get why that is a contentious issue, or even a question.

You can do Android development for free on a Windows or even Linux machine and run the app in an emulator. Apple are in the process of squashing a third-party emulator.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#107

Post by simonh »

teruakohatu wrote: post #29
_9vpl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, Apple takes 30% of in-app subscriptions for customers If a customer signs up and setups payment for the service outside the app, then Apple doesn't take a cut. That's why you can't buy books in the Audible iOS app, or subscribe to Netflix via the iOS app. But you can login and watch/listen to content you've already bought or subscribed to.

What is the justification for the 30% in year one, Apple's costs don't halve after one year? Sounds like they are simply hurting competitors profitability.

Apple makes no distinction between companies on it's platform that compete with it and those that do not, they are all treated the same, so it's hard to see an argument that this is mainly targeted at their competitors holding water.

Furthermore e.g. Apple does compete with Amazon kindle store on the Apple platform, but Google doesn't compete with AMamzon yet imposes almost identical terms on the Amamzon kindle store on Android. So if it's ok for Google to apply those terms on Android, why is it not ok for Apple to apply those terms on iOS?

This whole line of reasoning simply doesn't make a lick of sense. If it is reasonable for Apple to charge companies on their platform at all, then the evidence in the market is that their current charges are competitive and reasonable.

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#108

Post by synthmeat »

dannyw wrote: post #81
synthmeat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it mentioned (at all), but my hypothesis for 30% is that it is because of money laundering. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to provide gift cards, would have to limit spending per app, cap all the prices, monitor whale spenders, etc. Easiest just to make it unprofitable.

Considering that: * iTunes gift cards regularly go on sale for 60-70% of its value on third party markets, and * 30% is a reasonable, to cheap, price to pay for money laundering, I think your theory is unfounded.

Where did you get the "30%"? Last time I researched, it was much less than that. Even at casual glance now, highest figures seem to be at most 15%.

https://www.piie.com/publications/chapters_preview/381/3iie3...

Gift cards would be the least efficient method here for large amounts, so I guess it would not surprise me it's not used there. No one's gonna go hunting small amounts of gift cards on discount on ebay to launder tens of millions of dollars. But who knows...

Re: Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it

#110

Post by m12k »

mikece wrote: post #77

Having Apple take a 30% cut of sales in exchange for not having to run an e-commerce operation is far less odious than having to pay $5,000 for a MacBook Pro which has less RAM, a smaller SSD, and less powerful processor than $2,500 worth of Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer gear. The hardware is the real rip-off to me. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee if I could write my apps in VS Code on Debian and then ship the code t…

The price of buying a computer to compile and ship the code with is not going to kill many business models that would otherwise have worked (you can buy a used Mac Mini or make a Hackintosh if you're feeling adventurous vs the TOS). But forcing you to use their payment system which takes a 30% cut - that can and does prevent business models from even being possible. If Apple were not allowed to enforce their payment system's monopoly and reject apps for even linking to other options (I don't get how that can be legal), but had to compete with other solutions, that 30% cut would almost certainly be less.
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