> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.

The US doesn't have antitrust authority for the world, only for the US. iPhone has had 60% market share (or similar) for a long time now, so it's fair to consider that Apple has significant and durable market power in mobile phones.

Is it a complete monopoly? No, but it doesn't need to be.

From a very brief skim of the claims, the clearest one that stands out to me is the one about smartwatches. If Apple does provide better integrations to Apple Watches than 3rd party watches, that's pretty clearly 'tying' which is prohibited when using a market dominant product to create market dominance in a new market (smartwatches). OTOH, it wouldn't have been a big deal if the Microsoft Band had better integrations than other watches on Windows Phone, because tying is allowed without market dominance.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Apple App Store is $99 annually + cost of owning a Mac, compared to a one time $25 Google Play Store (develop on PC or Mac, with the possibility to avoid the Play Store). More people own PCs (even within the developer community) so this leads to more apps in the PC and Android ecosystem. More competition, means lower prices.

I've also heard Apple is much more strict about what they allow on their App store, which further restricts supply and keeps prices high. I don't think this is an accident, Apple intentionally wants high prices on their platform, because it keeps the illusion alive that Apple devices are luxury devices and a status symbol.

“Keep prices high”. The top grossing iOS apps are all like $1-2. That is not high. In fact, from what I could tell on sensortower.com, apps from the same developers were priced identically between stores, and the average prices of Android top grossing apps were higher. Probably because of the LOW VOLUME, not related to overhead.

You’re trying hard to find reasons to blame Apple for an active marketplace. What exactly do you want to achieve?

The PlayStore on iOS? The free market doesn’t work. It’s a myth. I’d much rather pay $10 for a good app here or there than have a store full of “free” or $0.05 trash where it’s not worth anyone’s time to invest in building something good.

But if was to guess, I would say that Android users fall into two camps primarily. One is high end tech-savvy users who want it because it's more open, powerful and flexible. These people don't buy apps and services because they are "smart" and use their tech knowledge to solve the problems those things are solving cheaper ways (or for free).

Then there are a second group of Android users who simply buy it because it is cheaper, or they just have absolutely no interest / affinity for Apple's branding. These users aren't going to buy things because their primary motivation in the first place was to not spend excessive money on something they don't care about (or they just don't have the money).

I'd also suggest that perhaps the 7x is a bit exaggerated. It's just harder to account for the revenue from Android apps because it's more driven by off-market streams. But I totally believe iOS is much much more. It might just not be 7x.

Apple doesn't have this power though. If they raised prices they'd lose sales. And they haven't been able to exclude competitors, there is a robust ecosytem of Android manufacturers.

There's a reason the FTC has been losing almost all of their cases recently. They internalized the idea that a large successful company is inherently bad and focus on that rather than any objective legal standard.

Yes, that's true for every company. So monopolies don't exist?

There are lots of inexpensive phones on the market

Where does your mind drift off to when you read the phrase "walled garden"?

Certainly other companies can't be in Apple's walled garden, but in antitrust exclude means exclude from the market. Apple hasn't done that, there's a vibrant market in phones, computers, tablets, smartwatches, etc.

It has market power, but it's not significantly larger than its competition. It's not 60% for iPhone, and 10% split up amongst 4 other competitors. It's 60% vs 40%... and probably more like 58% vs 42% [1].

Does 8% truly make Apple "dominant" to the point that integrating their software with watches in a better manner is illegal? I find that wildly difficult to believe.

> that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

Apple has been able to raise its own prices, but it hasn't been wildly out of line with competitors.

And Apple both makes phones and the software on them. They might be excluding or making competitors to their software have a harder time, but excluding? Not really - they have only excluded other large companies who have distinctly decided to run afoul of their guidelines (specifically, Epic).

1. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users

a) supressing super apps

b) supressing cloud streaming apps

c) restricting capabilities of 3rd party messaging apps, specifically carrier based messaging (SMS)

d) restricting the best smartwatch integration to only their own devices

e) something I don't grok about digital wallets

There's maybe a case that Google is doing c; I think they made it harder to get the permissions for reading and writing SMS. And I don't think they allow non-Google, non-manfuacturer apps to do RCS, if RCS counts as carrier-based messaging and not yet another Google messaging service.

I don't understand the complaint about Digital Wallets, so I don't really know if Google is doing it.

I don't follow smartwatches, but I thought the Android ecosystem was pretty agnostic there? Back when Google Wear was Google Glass, they did let Google push notifications from a phone with Bluetooth, but everyone else had to push through Google servers, but I think when they moved it to wrists, that changed and everyone can push direct from the phone to the watch.

I haven't heard any drama over super apps or gaming streaming apps being blocked from Google Play... And worse case, developers can serve apks from their website directly.

I'm sure there's room to find things Google does with Android that could be market manipilation, but Google does seem to be aware of the risk and try to avoid crossing the line.

That is basically what it is though. Google is not the 40%, it's Google, Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc. Yes Google Play Store is on 40% of those devices, but they can ship with other stores and some do.

2. The 60% of Apple iPhone / iOS Market "usage" share ( incase people want to be pedantic and refer it as shipping market share ), commands over 70% if not 80% of purchasing power in Apps or other sub market sector. That is a huge difference in market power.

I will reply with a separate quote from the DOJ discussing what thresholds of market share are likely to be considered monopoly power:

> In determining whether a competitor possesses monopoly power in a relevant market, courts typically begin by looking at the firm's market share.(18) Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred,"(19) they have demanded a dominant market share. Discussions of the requisite market share for monopoly power commonly begin with Judge Hand's statement in United States v. Aluminum Co. of America that a market share of ninety percent "is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty or sixty-four percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three per cent is not."(20) The Supreme Court quickly endorsed Judge Hand's approach in American Tobacco Co. v. United States.(21) Following Alcoa and American Tobacco, courts typically have required a dominant market share before inferring the existence of monopoly power. The Fifth Circuit observed that "monopolization is rarely found when the defendant's share of the relevant market is below 70%."(22) Similarly, the Tenth Circuit noted that to establish "monopoly power, lower courts generally require a minimum market share of between 70% and 80%."(23) Likewise, the Third Circuit stated that "a share significantly larger than 55% has been required to establish prima facie market power"(24) and held that a market share between seventy-five percent and eighty percent of sales is "more than adequate to establish a prima facie case of power."(25)

https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...

My reading of this is that below 50% is very unlikely to be considered monopoly power while above 70-80% is very likely. 60% appears to sit somewhere in between where it is possible but not likely. Historically, I have not seen any major cases where monopoly power was found at the market share level that Apple currently holds.

It is worth noting that the DOJ in their filing does not seem very confident in being able to prove that Apple's 60% of the smartphone market constitutes monopoly power either. They have instead opted to define a narrower market of "performance smartphones" where Apple apparently holds 70% market share, putting it above the thresholds quoted above. Whether this artificially narrowed market definition will be accepted by the courts will likely determine the outcome of this case.

The word "monopoly" needs to be banned from these types of discussions because it always derails the conversation into pointless semantic bickering. There is no definition of that word that will make everyone happy. Even if Apple had 99.999% marketshare, as long as there's some hacker selling DIY linux phones under a bridge somehwere, someone's going to say Apple CAN'T be a monopoly because they have a competitor.

There are many reasons why antitrust laws exist, and these lawsuits tend to be really complex. There's not a simple `if(company.is_monopoly()) sue(company);` program that the FTC and DOJ use to decide when to sue.

This case is about the US marketplace, globally is irrelevant.

And it is about more than just marketshare. Apple's tactics restrict the entire marketplace --- not just Apple captives.

Whole classes of apps are simply not practically possible on Android without paying monetary tribute to Apple.

For example, universal messaging is not possible without paying the Apple gatekeeper. Few people will use a messaging app if it can't communicate with 60% of their friends. And the only to make this happen is to pay Apple.

I would love to not use Discord, but I'd lose messaging with about half my social circle.

Next you can sue designer clothing companies for not handing their products out for free to poor teens.

Using any other app just adds friction - obviously your best friend isn't going to stop talking to you because of it but weaker relationships might not survive.

Yes --- unless they've been anointed with a special "friends and family" exemption offered in select cases.

WhatsApp Business is a subscription product. The fruit deity demands 30% tribute for this from any ordinary developer.

There is in fact universal messaging - it's called SMS. You don't need to pay Apple to use it. If you would have added secure to your example then yes that would be correct.

I find it maddening that a lot of people replying to your fair point have chosen to ignore the first half and decided to exclusively focus on the latter, when that part was clearly meant as an example of how market definitions can have an impact.

A fairly recent example of the latter being a commonly mischaracterized or (by members of the public) outright dismissed concern was MSFTs dominance in the Cloud Gaming market, which was often met either with "but MSFTs share of the gaming market overall is less" or the even less applicable "but nobody uses Cloud Gaming anyway", even though neither should count towards whether something rises to anti-competitive behavior in a given market.

This is like saying Y Combinator controls 100% of the Hacker News market, or that Amazon controls 100% of the AWS market. It's a non-sensical argument.

I have no idea what the numbers are, but if 80% of all commerce on mobile is going through Apple's devices then yes, it's likely that the Government will want to ensure there is "fairness" in that eco-system.

"It sometimes just amazes me that people who actually work in the tech industry, and are in their 30s and 40s, claim that it would be just fine if smart phones had the same app security and privacy model as the Mac or Windows, and that there is no benefit at all from additional controls. Where have these people been for the last 30 years? You seriously want to let any developer do whatever they want to a device that billions of people carry around every day?"

Is the implication that Apple should allow iOS on non-Apple devices? There is not a single hardware company in the world that would integrate iOS to the degree that Apple does. A requirement like this would immediately enshittify Apple’s brand.

If my water provider said "We're the only water provider so we're raising rates 1000%, take it or leave it", you would still say that's a monopoly even though i could move house to an area with another water provider.

Apple has a 100% monopoly though it's AppStore on 2 billion devices though which $90,000,000,000 in trade is conducted. If that's not a market big enough to be considered for Anti-Competitive practices and illegally maintaining a monopoly then i don't know what is.

That's more trade than the entire GDP of Luxembourg!