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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

#81

Post by dannyw »

synthmeat wrote: post #61
lilyball wrote: post #9

Something odd about this argument is the fact that 30% is pretty much an industry standard. Apple isn't jacking up the price.

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.

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

#82

Post by ksec »

lilyball wrote: post #9

Something odd about this argument is the fact that 30% is pretty much an industry standard. Apple isn't jacking up the price.

I think the 30% is a rough industry standard in most Retail sectors. Apple was basically pricing the App Store like an Online Retail store.

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

#83

Post by rimliu »

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…

There is a more to laptop than just raw numbers of RAM, SSD and CPU. Paying six-digits for the car that has same number of wheels as Tata — outrageous.

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

#84

Post by chrisweekly »

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…

(Agrees, and ponders lack of macOS cloud offerings to address this use case.)

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

#85

Post by heisenbit »

ksec wrote: post #82
lilyball wrote: post #9

Something odd about this argument is the fact that 30% is pretty much an industry standard. Apple isn't jacking up the price.

I think the 30% is a rough industry standard in most Retail sectors. Apple was basically pricing the App Store like an Online Retail store.

Yes, it was a reasonable take way back. But technology moved on and is fact that most of the technology advances accrued with Apple and not with consumers or developers. And this power position is locked by technical and legal means thus there is no possibility for others to wade in.

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

#86

Post by hkhanna »

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 their phones continued to use iMessage even though my phone no longer supported it. Sometimes their messages came through to me, sometimes they didn't. I would see half of a conversation, and many of my messages wouldn't reach members of the group. Eventually, people stopped including me in group text messages because it made the chats unreliable.

After 18 months of being increasingly isolated from all my friends, I switched back to an iPhone. I switched only for the reason that it was difficult to keep in touch with people without it.

One-to-one messaging worked fine, but I was left out of group chats, a critical way my friends and I stay in touch.

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

#87

Post by mikece »

rimliu wrote: post #83
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…

There is a more to laptop than just raw numbers of RAM, SSD and CPU. Paying six-digits for the car that has same number of wheels as Tata — outrageous.

The inability to augment the MacBook Pro is a bigger pain. With my 3 year old Lenovo P50 I can swap BOTH NVMe slots, upgrade the RAM, etc. With the MacBook Pro I can only buy USB-C cables and adapters.

Your point about six-figure cars is a good one. I can either spend $90k to $120k on a car to drive to work that's super quiet on the inside, or spend $12k on a used Accord and another $400 on the top-flight Bose noise-cancelling headphones and achieve the same level of quiet on my commute. The way Apple builds their hardware you can't modify it to improve how it works for you; the only option is to take it or leave it.

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

#88

Post by simonh »

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.

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

#89

Post by mcv »

braythwayt wrote: post #73
ksec wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on most if not all points but the article didn't argue against any of that. It did point out two things. Companies don't have to literally be the only buyer in a marketplace to wield "monopsony power." If competition isn't perfect — like when there are only a few companies in a market and they aren't undercutting each other's prices — companies gain some ability to lower the price on the stuff they buy. Sellers…

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.

Large supermarket chains are absolutely a great example of monopsony power. Producers selling to the supermarket often can't choose their own price. The supermarket can decide the price, and if the producer doesn't like it, he gets to sell nothing at all, even if the actual customers do like the product. And supermarkets absolutely use this power. I've heard of supermarkets deciding to discount certain items against the wishes of the producers, but still letting the producers pay for the discount. Because the supermarket controls the distribution channel, they wield power over both the customer and the producer.

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

#90

Post by brennebeck »

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…

In that case wouldn’t it make sense to try to get your friends to use another group chat?

I get people love to use the iMessage groups, but every friend I have on Android create a WhatsApp group, etc. and it’s pretty trivial to use and maintain, especially with close friends.

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