271–280 of 958 posts
Kids are the customers, parents have the credit card. Epic will have to onboard the parents to really make a dent. What Epic wanted was their own separate store, and that wish is clearly shut down.
> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…
At the end of the day, who cares if they are a monopoly or not - you don't have to be a monopoly to be in a position to do Bad Stuff to The Market.
This is a level of consumer privacy that's not found anywhere else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they mean systems with a SIM card or internet access without being tethered to WIFI.
You can buy iPads with cellular. You’ve been able to since the iPad 1.
Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…
The first sentence is true but incomplete, making the second wrong. For example, the Amazon app is highly likely to have people using their existing Amazon payment method. Companies like Stripe are going to offer their own SDKs just like they do for web payments. Apple’s offerings are quite polished so I don’t think they’ll fall out of favor but it’s going to reduce their profit margin and I’m sure the number of people who will use alternatives is much greater than zero.
Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is "cartel" fitting? These companies aren't always associated. (Though recent leaks do seem to indicate behind-doors conversations are taking place.) Some of the prevailing themes: - These companies are after attention across any vertical a person may touch - These companies build platforms that scope creep into other platforms and verticals. They connect and entrench them. - They make it impossible to access consume…
What you're describing looks more like the supermarket shelves. Some 80% of products in the cereal aisle are owned by three companies. Nobody really cares, but the switching costs to get a cereal outside that controlled space turn out to be pretty high (just try it with a family with kids). If you want to make your own cereal, good luck; the supermarkets trust the Big Three and are pretty uninterested in flighting so…
- They make it hard for consumers to shop at other stores. Or repair their devices (bad analogy).
- They're doing all kinds of things a supermarket would never do. Like turning into music and movie studios.
- The really sad thing is that before the giants sprang into existence, you could distribute your software and services without the need for a supermarket. Famgopolies created an artificial warehousing system and forced us all into it.
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How would you like the definition of a monopoly to change? Or to avoid sniping over details if you're not sure of a definition text, how would you like it to change and to what objective?
Personally? I think we should get away from "monopoly" and move towards "excessively large market entity." The problems now have more to do with market capitalization / revenue than they do with physical control. Apple or Google aren't trying to buy all the railroad tracks between Cincinnati and Kansas City (app stores aside). They're trying to assemble a company that owns all the disparate but critical pieces in an…
When a platform or market is created by an entity, and that platform reaches a certain scale, they must allow free competition within that market.
Here's an extreme example. Say somewhere down the line Facebook invents some metaverse or VR world. This becomes the primary form of interaction between people... 99% of interactions take place in this virtual world. It's clear the scale and extent to which this platform impacts people's lives is substantial. So Facebook logically would have to allow other sellers to enter this virtual world and compete to drive prices towards a free market equilibrium.
Past monopoly legislation has focused on competition outside the walls, product vs product. But nowadays the walled gardens are getting big enough to the point that these companies have large control over our lives.
Maybe that example just muddies things, but the important thing in my mind is to identify "private markets" and enforce that competition be allowed.
I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my life harder compared to Apple Pay. I'm hoping with this movement, tools like Stripe/Paddle will develop some better IAP flows to make it as easy as possible. Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does not sound appeali…
I highly doubt there will be any win for consumers. App developers probably aren't going to reduce their prices by 20%
Hard to see how this is a win for consumers in addition to developers.