It's a little weird to say that the app store has a monopoly on distributing apps on iPhones.

Does Apple also have a monopoly on writing the OS that runs on iPhones?

Do they also have a monopoly on creating the iPhone hardware? And choosing what they write in press releases?

> Does Apple also have a monopoly on writing the OS that runs on iPhones?

Yes, of course. But I think the issue might be the extent to which this is an artificial monopoly, rather than a natural one.

It should be perfectly possible to run custom OS on all Apple hardware if it was not for the artificial limitations they added.

I doubt other companies would want to create their own device drivers

The mere mention of Google, a perfectly suitable competitor, leads me to believe you don’t understand what a monopoly is...

Smartphones are not stand alone widgets. They are portals into vast troves of software made by legions of developers. Right now, at least for Apple, their app store is the lone chokepoint between this software and the world. Them taking 30% of every sale between the developers and their users deserves scrutiny. This percentage is not based on the market because there is no market. There is one option. There lies the monopoly.

To spell this out further: There is competition in the smartphone market... but the app store has an artificial monopoly on iOS software distribution which is a separate market serving more than 100 million people.

Hell, from my perspective the app store is part of the competition. I buy i-devices over Android for a few reasons but high on the list is the set of restrictions Apple places on developers, including their payment restrictions. Those aren't harming me, they're giving me one OS where ~ none of my mind ever has to be dedicated to considering a bunch of stuff that it does on other platforms. One platform safe for less-computer-savvy relatives, that also still lets them do basically anything they might want to do and operate independently. That is choice, the fact that I can choose that.

> The mere mention of Google, a perfectly suitable competitor,

A perfectly suitable competitor ... which has exactly the same fees, similar policies and do not seem to have any pressure due to the competition to change them, yeah something does not sound right here.

Alternatively I could compare the number of companies I could use to host my web app (100k+) to the number of companies I could use to host my mobile app (just 2). The lack of competition when you compare that to an healthy market is obvious.

Many industries converge on similar pricing, and that doesn’t make it anti competitive. It may be anti competitive here, but that also may just be the natural price the market is willing to bear.

Google doesn’t make any iOS phones though. You can make it look like there are never monopolies if you choose to only look at certain markets while ignoring others.

You’re doing just that: you’re making everything look like a monopoly by focusing on a single product. Yes, Apple has a “monopoly” on iPhones the same way that Nike has a monopoly on Air Jordans. It’s not a monopoly.