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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

#191

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scarface74 wrote: post #179
p49k wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not like Tesla; iPhones are often touted as a “luxury brand” but the truth is that they offer products of quality that are roughly in proportion to their pricing, and their high margins are due to better/more efficient operations than their competitors. A phone is such an essential tool in one’s life and priced low enough that it makes sense to invest in a product that is of good quality. Most people can aff…

Movies - if you buy a music on iTunes from most of the major studios, you can sync your purchases with Amazon Video, Google Play Movies and Vudu using Movies Anywhere. Blame the studios that refuse to cooperate for the ones you can’t. Music - any music you buy from iTunes has been DRM free for over a decade. Books - if that’s a concern, buy ebooks from Amazon - like everyone else dies. As far as buying apps, most mon…

> Do you also feel that Nintendo, Microsoft (XBox) and Sony should be equally regulated for controlling distribution over their digital stores?

It's not about what they put in their own store. It's about not allowing competing stores. And game consoles shouldn't be allowed to do it either.

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

#193

Post by scarface74 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #183
scarface74 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you’re not implying the old wives tale about Apple nit allowing apps that compete with it on the store. If so, there are plenty of existence proofs that that isn’t true.

What applications in the Apple store are able to function as the default SMS app or the default web browser engine? On Android, I can use Signal for SMS and Firefox for browser engine. On my spouse's iPhone, the iOS applications with the same names are severely restricted in their functionality. Blocking ads, scripts, and tracking is significantly more difficult. If you believe these are core OS functions, and theref…

Are they allowed to be default no. Are they allowed on the App Store - yes.

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

#194

Post by Hello71 »

joefourier wrote: post #94
hkhanna wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've only heard of this happening in the US and Canada. Outside of North America, everyone uses Whatsapp, which supports group messaging on every platform. I'd be curious to know why it hasn't penetrated into those countries.

It has not been my experience that everybody in China uses WhatsApp.

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

#195

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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?

It's both, because they're two different contexts. There is no monopoly on phones; Android phones are direct competition. But what about app distribution? If you make apps and you want to buy app distribution to reach all customers, who is Apple's real competition for reaching customers on iOS? They haven't any; it's a monopoly. And it's not just like Walmart having a monopoly on shelf space at Walmart, because most Walmart customers will also shop at Target or Amazon, but most iOS customers don't also shop for apps at Google Play or Amazon. Apple is the only path to reach them.

Saying they could just buy an Android phone is like saying that a retailer with a regional monopoly in California doesn't really have a monopoly because all your customers could just move to New York. That's an unreasonable barrier to buy a $1 item, and on top of that it isn't even under the control of the app developer who wants to buy app distribution.

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

#196

Post by grawprog »

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…

>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.

What about 3?

Apple's products are overpriced and underpowered, locked down devices sold as fashion statements or 'lifestyle' accessories that are more like toys for rich people than the miniature computers they're supposed to be.

As for their computers, similar argument, overpriced, underpowered, locked down hardware.

And then there's the whole culture of snobbery surrounding Apple and their products that has existed since at least the mid-late 90's about how superior Apple products are to everything else always that's just kind of grated on me...well since then.

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

#197

Post by LockAndLol »

> But Kavanaugh went further. He said Apple could also be sued by app developers, most of whom are forced to fork over a big percentage of their potential revenue, "on a monopsony theory."

Is it possible for users to easily install alternative app-stores? Wouldn't that solve the problem?

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

#198

Post by rickdeckard »

scarface74 wrote: post #193
logfromblammo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What applications in the Apple store are able to function as the default SMS app or the default web browser engine? On Android, I can use Signal for SMS and Firefox for browser engine. On my spouse's iPhone, the iOS applications with the same names are severely restricted in their functionality. Blocking ads, scripts, and tracking is significantly more difficult. If you believe these are core OS functions, and theref…

Are they allowed to be default no. Are they allowed on the App Store - yes.

Neither of those are actually available, because iOS browsers are not allowed to use other browser-engines than Safari and apps have no means to manage SMS on behalf of the iOS messaging app.

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

#199

Post by fenomas »

DagAgren wrote: post #128
fenomas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for Japan, but all three major carriers here had app stores years before the iPhone launched. (Apple's may have been the first store operated by a hardware maker rather than a carrier though.)

Yes, carriers had app stores, that were not generally open to anyone, and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.

> that were not generally open to anyone

Apple's store isn't open to anyone.

> and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.

AFAIK Docomo (largest carrier in Japan) took 9%. Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?

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

#200

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ubermonkey wrote: post #164
julianozen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is certainly true, computers and especially mobile ones need to allow consumers to run whatever software they want period. While in the US, it becomes a small inconvenience for us that companies like Netflix and Spotify are having their business sidelined by apple, Apples lock on phones becomes a human rights issue in places like Hong Kong, Russia and Saudi Arabia when Apple complies with local regulation.…

>While this is certainly true, computers and especially mobile ones need to allow consumers to run whatever software they want period. GOOD LORD NO. Apple's curation of the iOS environment is a FEATURE for me, not a bug. It leads to drastically increased stability and security, and means I don't have to sysadmin my telephone. I'll fight whoever suggests this is a good model for the desktop, but on the phone it's EXAC…

> Apple's curation of the iOS environment is a FEATURE for me, not a bug. It leads to drastically increased stability and security, and means I don't have to sysadmin my telephone.

That's fine. So why shouldn't it be possible to install apps on iOS via Google Play or Amazon, and if you trust only Apple you could just not use those?

> Uh, no. Android phones are generally CHEAPER, so why does it take "money" to leave iOS?

Because it's not just the price of the phone, it's the cost of transitioning to a different ecosystem, which can easily be more than the entire price of the phone.

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