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U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#121

Post by myhf »

ihuman wrote: post #104
lbacaj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately for Apple, I do think the App Store being an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS is in fact causing prices of Apps, in many cases, to be higher than they should be. The perfect example of this is the subscription services, right now you can get a cheaper subscription to a service such as Spotify if you buy it off the App Store. That is a prime example of how much the 30% payment t…

How long have you been using the iOS app store for? IMO App prices now are lower than they were when the app store first opened in iPhoneOS 2, and way lower than they were before the iPhone. I remember simple games for Palm OS costing at about $20 [0] . Nowadays that game would either be [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20040418012411/http://astraware....

Price of "Angry Birds" in 2009: $0.99 one-time

Price of the same "Angry Birds" in 2018: $0 to install, $1.99 per 80 gems, no way to disable in-app ads or purchases.

Free-to-play is an increase in price.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#122

Post by wild_preference »

lwansbrough wrote: post #80
rickycook wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn’t pin that all on anti competitive behaviour though... the end to end control of the platform is kind of Apples MO, and is a fairly distinguishing feature between the Android ecosystem and the Apple ecosystem. it’d be nice to have another distribution option, but not at the expense of a simple UX, security, or any other very valid reason to only allow a tightly controlled experience

Oh okay, so as long as it's their MO to have a monopoly then it's fine. I'm sure plenty of iPhone users, for example, would like to have a PornHub app on their iPhone, but that's currently impossible because of Apple's guidelines. You could build a very high quality app and be denied for a reason strictly outside of the "UX, security 'or any other very valid reason'" that Apple arbitrarily decides.

Their point wasn't just "it's their MO". You just attacked the lowest hanging fruit. It doesn't make for good discussion.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#123

Post by darpa_escapee »

threeseed wrote: post #45
lbacaj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately for Apple, I do think the App Store being an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS is in fact causing prices of Apps, in many cases, to be higher than they should be. The perfect example of this is the subscription services, right now you can get a cheaper subscription to a service such as Spotify if you buy it off the App Store. That is a prime example of how much the 30% payment t…

Apple provides a service for that 30% though. They handle the payment processing, they build, moderate and curate the App Store apps and they provide a lucrative channel to market for app developers. So allowing Spotify et al to get all the benefits of the channel without paying for it is actually unfair to Apple.

If Apple's involvement is worth a 30% cut, surely they can compete in the free market with other App stores and distribution methods.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#124

Post by ajross »

scarface74 wrote: post #117

So if Apple loses what does that mean for the stores for the PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo.....

Presumably they'd be open to the same kind of suit, which IMHO is appropriate.

The issue at hand here is standing: do consumers have the right to sue for antitrust violations or is that limted to the app/game vendors who paid the markup most directly? The supreme court isn't going to decide on the merits of the specific case (because the original case in district court was thrown out due to standing -- this is the appeal of that decision) or whether or not Apple's 30% cut is appropriate.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#125

Post by ajross »

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #9

Here’s what I don’t get: in what sense is this a monopoly? Consumers have knowledge that the App Store is the only game in town on an iPhone, and they have the option to buy a different phone if they don’t want to use the App Store. That’s like saying that the manufacturer of my vacuum has a monopoly on vacuum bags.

No one has made a decision on that issue, and that's not what's being appealed. The question here is about who can sue, not whether there is an antitrust violation.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#126

Post by sulam »

threeseed wrote: post #101
samat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument will easily hold if there were any way to have a competing store on iOS devices. Apple banning any competition in that field makes ‘buy they provide value for the money’ look like forcing consumers hand. Not sure if I want to have a second AppStore (APNS, etc, etc.)

No. The argument holds irrespective of whether there is 1 store or a million stores. Spotify wants to use Apple's distribution channel without paying for it. That's unfair and doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. If I sell my software through a retail store they still take a cut.

Let’s use the Kindle app as an example then. The app cannot link to their site when I search for a book I don’t have. If it did, the app would be banned. So Apple is trying to extract a 30% premium from Amazon and the only way for them to avoid that is to give me a shitty experience that quantifiable harms me (I waste time to search for and then hop through the download behavior, adding friction to what should be a seamless flow). In return for their 30% they are adding very little value. Amazon does it’s own payment processing, curation is surely not worth almost a third of every book I buy, storage is paid for by Amazon, and the transmission costs are paid for by me.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#127

Post by jm20 »

lbacaj wrote: post #29

Unfortunately for Apple, I do think the App Store being an exclusive and default way to purchase and load apps on iOS is in fact causing prices of Apps, in many cases, to be higher than they should be. The perfect example of this is the subscription services, right now you can get a cheaper subscription to a service such as Spotify if you buy it off the App Store. That is a prime example of how much the 30% payment t…

This is really only an issue with low-margin licensing subscriptions like Spotify and Netflix, where they would lose money on every purchase if 30% of their margins went to Apple. While I definitely think there are some problems with the App Store, the fact is that it is so easy and streamlined for people buying apps that it’s worth the 30% for the vast majority of developers.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#128

Post by MBCook »

ariwilson wrote: post #115
MBCook wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I think I’ve only ever seen that for Steam/GOG.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Dead-Redemption-Xbox-Digital/dp/B...

I’ve seen the digital codes before, but that’s actually MORE expensive than disk.

I assumed they weren’t allowed to sell at a discount

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#129

Post by bubblethink »

I feel that all these measures are stop gaps at best. The fundamental thing you want is for customers to install whatever software they want on the hardware they buy. For mass market devices, it really ought to be a law that requires the manufacturer to allow consumers to do whatever they want. The manufacturer doesn't need to support these modes, and that's fine. Once you have that, the rest falls into place. This was the idea behind GPLv3 and anti-tivoization, but it never caught any traction for anything that matters.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Apple App Store antitrust dispute

#130

Post by sdinsn »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #67

Perhaps it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m hopeful that this doesn’t go anywhere for the simple fact that I don’t want to have to keep 5 different app stores installed to have access to everything. It would be cool to have an iOS equivalent of F-Droid, but I’d rather that not come at the cost of scattering commercial iOS apps across stores. I’m not keen on the idea of non-WebKit web engines on iOS either because it w…

Why do you jump to the conclusion that this will cause 5 app stores to be necessary?

Android pretty much only has 3 (Google Play, Amazon, & F-Droid), and the large majority never use anything other than Google Play.

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