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How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

nytimes.com

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Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#91

Post by 74ls00 »

coldtea wrote: post #66
nixpulvis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me with your analogy. Let me extend the pigskin thought exprement a bit. If I own the football team, and the field, and the city (hell, why not), then sure I can choose who plays QB, so I choose my son. Maybe at the start he's even not that bad of a QB, and our team wins some games. Everyone is happy. After a little while though, people realize there's no sense trying out for QB on my team. My son, now left…

It's more like: Apple built, run, maintains and owns a stadium. The stadium has a food court with many food stalls. Some of them, Apple runs themselves, but tons of others are run by people who pay N% of their revenues to Apple to be able to have them. They still need to supply their own food, branding, marketing, furniture, and pay their staff, Apple gives them access to the stadium crowds and a payment processing s…

But what if you’re not selling food, but merchandise targeted at this particular team’s fans. You can’t easily move shop to the other stadium - you have no choice but to suck up the fact that on the vendor map of the stadium, where it says merchandise, is actually Apple’s food court. Nobody is going to find your t’shirt stand.

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#92

Post by alienreborn »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #14

I'm not saying this isn't a problem, but it seems pretty minor compared to the fact that: 1) Apple's apps come preinstalled on every iPhone. 2) Apple's apps have permission to do things that 3rd party apps cannot. If I search for "Web Browser" on the App Store... well, technically I'll get results from third parties, but every single one is just a UI skin around Apple's own browser. That strikes me as a much larger p…

You don't see a problem with that first scenario where search results for 'podcasts' is filled with completely unrelated apps from Apple?

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#93

Post by tempodox »

I don't mind that at all. What bugs me much more is the complete lack of useful search and filter options in the AppStore and the resulting nonexistent discoverability. You basically only find those apps you know exist beforehand or that pop up by happenstance (if you're lucky). What point is there in boasting about how many million apps you have in your store when 99.99% are invisible for all practical purposes?

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#94

Post by coldtea »

m_ke wrote: post #74
coldtea wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times this old wives tale will have to be repeated till people understand what went on then, and how it's nothing like it's now? Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to 97%, in fact). Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes. The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way…

iOS revenue is 2x larger than android. There might be more cheap android phones out there but Apple has the majority of high income individuals.

Which is not relevant. Monopoly is defined on a market, not on income segments (and even if it mattered, still on the high income individuals iOS is hardly above say 70%).

Someone could sell cars for $5K and have 99% of the car market in a small city of 1000 people, while another one sells a single car for 100M and has 20 times the other's revenue. It's still the cheap car guy that has the monopoly.

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#95

Post by rchaud »

Jobs' "On Flash" letter seems like aeons ago, (~10 years) but even then people were commenting on the obvious implications. It pointed to Adobe Flash apps as battery-intensive and riddled with security bugs (both correct), and proposed that native apps were the solution.

But it went one step further by providing the casus belli against the distribution of software outside of Apple's walled garden. Create something Apple didn't approve of, and you get booted. A clear break from its desktop programs, which could be freely installed from wherever.

Now the full picture is beginning to emerge. It was good going for app developers when Apple was largely a devices company, but as it moves into software and content creation/delivery, its position as marketplace gatekeeper means that everyone else will have to start paying tributes (in the form of ads, which appear above organic search results) if you don't want to end up relegated to the bottom of its search algorithm.

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#96

Post by heavenlyblue »

umvi wrote: post #73
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, when a user is clearly searching for alternatives on the app store, it matters how far down you have to scroll to find a 3rd party app. If I delete Apple's Calendar, install a third party Calendar app (like Fantastical), and click a date link, I'll get a message asking me if I want to reinstall Apple's Calendar. I think it's pretty darn clear in that scenario what the user actually wants.

On the other hand, Apple products are (or were) frequently marketed towards the tech illiterate ("it just works") and so it's possible grandma accidentally deleted the calendar, tried to re-download via the App Store, downloaded the wrong one, etc.

Gmail on iOS will open Google Chrome if you have it installed. I don't know how they do it, but they definitely are doing it.

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#97

Post by coldtea »

74ls00 wrote: post #91
coldtea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like: Apple built, run, maintains and owns a stadium. The stadium has a food court with many food stalls. Some of them, Apple runs themselves, but tons of others are run by people who pay N% of their revenues to Apple to be able to have them. They still need to supply their own food, branding, marketing, furniture, and pay their staff, Apple gives them access to the stadium crowds and a payment processing s…

But what if you’re not selling food, but merchandise targeted at this particular team’s fans. You can’t easily move shop to the other stadium - you have no choice but to suck up the fact that on the vendor map of the stadium, where it says merchandise, is actually Apple’s food court. Nobody is going to find your t’shirt stand.

>You can’t easily move shop to the other stadium

For starters, nobody forces you to sell merchandise for this particular team's fans...

But the analogy breaks down here, because merchandize such as t-shirts is not dependent on the stadium to be used. You could sell it outside the stadium.

Whereas iOS software leverages the fact that the iOS is being sold, maintained, having the necessary APIs, and so on, and that iOS devices are being made and sell decently and lure people willing to pay for apps.

So it's like you want to sell a ware that's inherently dependent on the stadium (hence my stall analogy), but you don't like the terms of the stadium builder/owner/maintainer that allows businessmen to have those stalls on their stadium...

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#98

Post by coldtea »

iamzozo wrote: post #69
panpanna wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whose apps should have come preinstalled on iPhones? At Redmond, we believe everyones apps should come pre-installed. Bought a PC for serious work? well f--- you and please enjoy some candy crush!

I never forget the IE war, when everybody complain about the preinstalled browser. And that time they called "monopolistic practices". At apple, they even don't know what these words mean... /s

>I never forget the IE war, when everybody complain about the preinstalled browser. And that time they called "monopolistic practices"

That's because at that time Microsoft had a monopoly.

>At apple, they even don't know what these words mean... /s

That's because Apple never had a monopoly. Their market share was always on the low 10% (desktop), or the mid-40s (mobile).

Re: How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls

#99

Post by gamblor956 »

coldtea wrote: post #58
Causality1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU fined Microsoft six hundred million dollars just for including Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows by default. Apple's behavior is much worse than that.

How many times this old wives tale will have to be repeated till people understand what went on then, and how it's nothing like it's now? Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to 97%, in fact). Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes. The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way…

Apple has a monopoly on iOS devices. An iApp only runs on iOS, so it's irrelevant that Apple is a minority of the mobile market because that's not the market being analyzed for the antitrust issues.
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