The Apple App Store should be viewed as anti-competitive corporate behavior. These people are working to change the status quo by breaking the shackles of the Apple ecosystem.
Editor’s note: This article comes from “Tencent Technology” , author Jin Lu. Reprinted with permission.
[Key points]
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1 According to the Apple App Store policy, users cannot directly pay app developers to use apps or digital services. They can only pay Apple. Apple takes a 30% commission from it, and then pays the remaining 70 % Transferred to developers.
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2 Due to reluctance to continue to pay the so-called “Apple tax”, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Kindle, etc. have cancelled the in-app purchase function from the iOS application and launched their own alternatives.
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3 Smaller application developers have no choice but to abide by Apple’s rules and compete with similar applications developed by Apple. Apple’s own applications do not need to pay commissions.
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4 The Apple platform is much less open than Google. Unlike its competitors, Apple does not allow the installation of any app store other than its own app store on the iPhone.
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5 Critics say that the success of the app store is masking the reality that Apple is using its huge market power to bully, blackmail, and even destroy competitors and business partners, and that its hidden monopoly power is gradually becoming apparent come out.
(About 10,000 words in this article, about 15 minutes to read the full text)
Apple officially launched its App Store in July 2008, providing iOS users with their own and third-party application download services. At that time, there were only 800 applications available for download, and the downloads were about 10 million times. However, after more than a decade of improvement and restructuring, the app store has become an important pillar of Apple’s services business, which has brought rich returns to Apple.
By 2019, this online store has more than 2 million apps available for download and more than 30 billion downloads. As the scale gets larger, Apple has developed many unique policy terms for the app store, and has shown a strong monopoly power. Many developers, competitors, critics, politicians, and regulators are calling for antitrust investigations into the Apple App Store business to break the constraints of their ecosystem.
The following is the body of the article:
You may have just bought a new iPad Air for $ 500 and ca n’t wait to sign up for Netflix to watch the hit drama “Black Mirror” on its dazzling Retina Display. But first you need to download the Netflix app from the iOS app store and open it to register, but you will see a message that looks like an error.
It says: “Want to join Netflix? You can’t sign up for Netflix in the app. We know it’s troublesome. After you become a member, you can start watching shows in the app.” It’s weird that if you want to sign up for Netflix, it doesn’t give further instructions on how to register or where to register: no URL, no QR code, or even tips on how to join. If you are not a member yet, you are “game over” here.
This is not a loophole in the Apple App Store. With some exceptions, the company does not allow users to pay app developers directly for use of their apps or digital services. They can only pay Apple, and Apple takes 30% of the commission and then passes the remaining 70% to the developer. To tighten control, Apple even barred affected apps from telling users how to pay developers directly.
In 2018, due to reluctance to continue to pay the so-called “Apple tax”, Netflix followed the Spotify and Amazon’s Kindle Books app and cancelled the in-app purchase feature from its iOS app. Users must now register elsewhere, such as on the company’s website, to make the app available. Of course, because these brands are big enough, many users will unconsciously look for them.
But at the same time, smaller app developers have no choice but to follow Apple’s rules. This is true even when competing with Apple’s own similar apps. Apple apps don’t need to pay such fees,It also generally provides deeper access to the user ’s device and the information on it.
Now a few developers are talking openly about this issue, and government regulators are starting to listen. David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of project management software company Basecamp, told the U.S. House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee in January that looking at Apple App Store fees, rules, and review processes feels like an experience ” “Kafka-esque nightmare” gives a sense of absurdity and tension that is full of realistic oppression.
As one of the most beloved companies in the world, Apple has long been known for providing “user-friendly products” and has established a noble image as a “user privacy protector.” The App Store, launched in 2008, is one of Apple’s most underrated inventions, and it has driven the success of the iPhone, which is perhaps the most profitable product in human history. The idea is that Apple and developers can share each other’s success, and iPhone users are the ultimate beneficiaries.
The benefits of the app store exceed the most optimistic expectations. According to data released by market research firm App Annie, Apple customers downloaded 32 billion iOS applications in 2019 and spent a total of $ 58 billion. This has not calculated the billions of dollars in advertising revenue brought by these applications. The Apple App Store itself has become an important global industry.
But critics say that the success of the app store masks the reality that Apple is now using its huge market power to bully, blackmail, and even destroy competitors and business partners. According to them, the Apple App Store should be considered anti-competitive corporate behavior. These people are working to change the status quo by breaking the shackles of the Apple ecosystem.
Apple creates a new form of monopoly
When referring to a technology monopoly, we may think of Google ’s search engine, which performs an Internet search that accounts for an estimated 93% of all search queries. You might think of Facebook’s dominance in the social media space. Among Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, it has the four most downloaded apps in the past decade. You might also think of Amazon, whose e-commerce platform is larger than the sum of its three competitors. You may also recall the early days of Microsoft, which was the target of antitrust investigations in the 1990s, when its Windows operating system drove about 85% of personal computers.
However, you may not think of Apple, whose mobile operating system controls less than half of the US market and less than a quarter of the global market. In terms of sales, Google’s Android system is still the market leader. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has called for a spin-off of the leading Internet platform, but she didn’t even mention the Cupertino-based tech giant.
This may be because, despite cyclical controversy, Apple is still popular as a consumer brand. In any case, more and more Apple customers, business partners, antitrust experts, and lawmakers are beginning to present reasons to regulate the company.
They think that Apple may not look like a typical traditional monopoly, but when it comes to how it operates an app store, its monopoly characteristics are fully demonstrated, including collecting commissions, setting up imposed terms, and making a “black box” Editorial decisions, content restrictions, and how to organize resources to replicate popular features applied by other companies to suppress competitors.
In fact, Android does offer another option. However, because iOS users account for the majority of all mobile application revenue in the United States, developers have no choice but to develop software for Apple products. David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of project management software company Basecamp, said: “If you want to publish software, if it doesn’t appear on the iPhone, it is essentially tantamount to suicide.”
Once Apple users join the company ’s ecosystem, it doesn’t matter if they have other options on the mobile platform. In theory, they can still switch to devices running Android, and Android also provides many similar features to iOS.
But in fact, Apple Empire is based on retaining customers, that is, making its hardware, software, and services work seamlessly with each other, but not compatible with competitors’ devices and services. When you switch from iOS to Android, tasks as simple as texting a friend can become a mess. The more Apple products you buy, the less likely you are to leave its ecosystem.
Apple’s platform is much less open than Google’s: unlike its competitors, Apple does not allow any app store except its own app store to be installed on the iPhone, nor does it allow users to “side load” download from the web or elsewhere Applications.
The company stated that its goal is to ensure that users can trust every application they download, and allowing unapproved applications may expose users to the risk of privacy breaches or malware attacks. Critics counter that there are betterMethods to balance privacy and security goals and provide consumers with more open choices.
Litigations against Apple go beyond iOS. As Apple tries to reinvent itself as a service company to offset the stagnation in hardware sales, the launch of subscription services such as Apple Music, Apple TV +, Apple News +, and Apple Arade, as well as its own credit card, has led to antitrust concerns Be more urgent. What used to be a theoretical argument, that is, whether its app store constitutes an illegal monopoly, is now the target of lawsuits in many ways.
Smart use of market leading forces
Apple faces antitrust lawsuits from consumers and developers, formal antitrust complaints filed by Spotify to the EU, antitrust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. House of Representatives Investigation by the Antitrust Subcommittee. This is not only related to Apple’s profit, but also to the future of mobile software.
Apple insists that this is not a monopoly. It strives to make the App Store a level playing field, even if its own applications are competing in this field. But in the face of unprecedented reviews, there are signs that the company, known for its stubbornness, may feel the pressure to provide proof. For example, just last week, there were media reports that Apple was considering allowing users to change the default mail and web browser settings on iPhones and iPads, replacing Apple’s own Mail and Safari with rival apps such as Gmail and Firefox.
On a Friday morning in January of this year, in Boulder, Colorado, U.S., executives from four mid-sized technology startups stood before U.S. lawmakers, proposing that several large online platforms are using their markets Power to bully, blackmail, copy and ultimately crush innovative competitors.
This unusual hearing is far from the corridors in which large tech lobbyists in Washington trade, and was chaired by the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Business and Administrative Law Subcommittee and Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Cicilline). This is the fifth and final hearing in a series of hearings on digital markets and competition, which will release a bipartisan report in April.
Lina Khan, who sits behind Xi Xilin at the hearing, is a child prodigy lawyer who has reshaped the nationTechnology and antitrust dialogue. After making headlines for criticizing Amazon’s market power, Lina accepted a position as legal counsel to the House Antitrust Subcommittee last year to help lead the investigation. As the spokesperson for the more aggressive ideology in the antitrust field, Lina’s attendance at these hearings is a signal to large tech companies that the committee is serious.
Both Google and Amazon have taken prominent positions in Boulder’s testimony, with smart speaker company Sonos blaming the former for stealing ideas and predatory pricing, while smartphone accessory maker PopSockets blaming Amazon for “laughing and bullying” . But perhaps surprisingly, the strongest arguments of many witnesses have been directed against Apple.
Tile executives at Tile, which manufacture Bluetooth tracking devices and help users find misplaced or stolen items, said the company has built a business on Apple’s platform and uses iOS applications as software companions for the hardware. Business has been good since it launched in 2014. Until June last year, there were rumors that Apple was developing its own version of Tile.
Tile Vice President and General Counsel Kirsten Daru testified that since then, Tile has been under siege. Apple abruptly stopped selling Tile’s physical devices in Apple stores, digging out Tile pie to help Apple integrate its products with Siri’s engineers. Apple has also developed an “offline find” system that competes with Tile, and it is built into the iPhone’s operating system through the “Find My” feature, which users cannot delete.
This makes the location tracking feature that is critical to Tile more cumbersome for third-party applications to protect user privacy, while helping Apple push its own similar applications. Apple has introduced new technologies that can improve the iPhone’s tracking capabilities, but there is no indication that it will be available to Tile or other developers.
Through these measures, Apple can access the wealth of information about Tile customers on the app store, including demographics, search history, and so on. Tile itself is not allowed to see this information. “We have seen Apple use its dominant market power again and again to engage in practices that put us at a competitive disadvantage,” Daru said.
Apple states that allowing third-party applications to track users’ locations can cause serious privacy issues, and said it has been working to balance user privacy with the ability of developers to make their applications as useful as possible.
In a letter from Apple to the Antitrust Subcommittee, Kyle Andeer, its vice president and chief compliance officer, stated that Apple has not restricted the ability of third-party applications such as Tile to track the location of users, It just makes sure the user knows this.
Ander wrote: “Enhancing privacy may not be in complianceEveryone’s business interests, but they are in the interest of everyone who owns a smartphone. “Apple also said that the company is working with developers interested in the” Always Allow “option for location tracking to provide default options when users first install the app.
Proud of “stealing great ideas”
Tile is not the only company complaining about Apple. Apple tends to copy key functions of third-party applications and integrate them into its operating system, which is so famous among developers that it has its own special name “Sherlocking”. It refers to the early 21st century, when Apple replaced the popular third-party web search interface Watson on MacOSX. Apple has built almost all of Watson’s features into its own features, called Sherlock.
In a 2006 blog post, Watson’s developer Karelia Software recalled that when Apple complained about Apple’s monopoly in 2002, Steve Jobs, Apple’s then CEO, did Out of response. According to Karelia founder Dan Wood, Jobs said at the time, “I think so. Do you know those small carts where people stand on pumps and move on the tracks? That’s Carrelia, and Apple is a steam train with tracks. “
From an antitrust perspective, this metaphor is almost perfect. It was the monopoly power of the railways in the late 19th century and their ability to establish or destroy companies using railways that stimulated the birth of America’s first antitrust law.
Here is another famous quote from Jobs. In 2006, when talking about Apple, Jobs said that he quoted Picasso’s famous phrase “imitation by the great, plagiarism by the great”, “we always maintain this shamelessness for stealing great ideas.” Company executives later tried to cleverly use the semantics of this sentence, but it is undeniable that most of today’s iOS is based on what was not originally Apple’s idea.
To be fair, this is true of many successful companies. Business success has always depended on marketing and execution, not just innovation. Nonetheless, the history of the Apple App Store has been flooded with companies that have gained fame only because Apple has integrated and profited from their inventions.
Tile considers it a typical representative of this type of company. The same is true of Blix, which developed a company called BlueMail’s email application, which includes anonymous login capabilities. Blix said that Apple copied its ideas in its latest sign-in feature, Sign In With Apple, and now requires every application developer who allows social login to use this feature. Blix said that within days of announcing this feature in June 2019, Apple kicked BlueMail out of the app store.
Apple insists that for security reasons, its offer to help Blix return to the store was rejected. The company said in a statement to the media: “The Apple App Store has a uniform set of guidelines that applies equally to all developers and is designed to protect users. Blix is proposing to overturn basic data security protections that could cause users to Of computers are exposed to malware that could harm their Mac computers and threaten their privacy. “
Blix responded to its delisting by suing Apple for patent infringement, and in November 2019 wrote an open letter to CEO Tim Cook and recruited other developers who felt they were pitted Join their actions. In February 2020, Apple resumed BlueMail in the Mac App Store, but Blix said it would not drop the lawsuit. Blix co-founder Dan Volach said in a statement that Apple’s response proved the value of being outspoken and brave. “When we wrote to Apple’s developer community, BlueMail was back in the app store within a week,” he said.
A “milkman” who no one dares to mess with
For many developers who rely on the Apple App Store to make a living, being outspoken seems like a risky strategy. As Ida Tin, CEO of period tracking app Clue, said in an interview in September 2019: “When you have only one milkman, you don’t want to annoy the milkman.”
At that time, Apple had just announced a similar menstrual tracking feature in iOS, which clouded Clue’s future. However, Apple provided new period tracking data to Clue and other third-party applications through its HealthKit programming interface (API) at launch, which at least gave them the opportunity to compete with their products.
According to Apple, app stores are all about competition and consumer choice. Submitted to the House of RepresentativesIn response to the Monopoly Commission, Kyle Andeer, Apple ’s vice president and chief compliance officer, wrote, “Since we created the app store, we have seen competition as a way to help our users access the best apps. The best way, even if these apps compete directly with our similar apps. Our apps compete with apps from third-party developers in every category, and in many cases, developer apps are more successful. “
Apple Corps said that when Apple rejects competitors ’application updates or runs as they think, it always keeps users’ interests in mind. But developers have also benefited a lot, and Apple says that over the years, it has paid more than $ 155 billion in app store revenue to third-party developers.
The company also states that most apps (84%) in the app store are free, so there is no cost to Apple. These apps (including big-name apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest) make money by selling ads, and Apple’s main benefit is just to make its devices more useful and attractive to buyers.
Apple and its minimalism are popular for a reason. Apple’s ability to integrate new features into its operating system is worthy of recognition, even if it makes some applications obsolete. For example, if people want to turn their iPhone into a flashlight, they need to open the app store, browse the flashlight applications launched by developers they have never heard of, and try to find out which are legitimate and which are trying to send them spam ads or mining They are data, which is usually difficult.
Although it may be unfair for Apple to provide its own applications with access rights that third-party competitors do not have, it is undoubtedly important to figure out which third-party applications deserve what level of access. Something more tricky. It may sound simple to leave all these decisions to the user, but the premise is to ensure that this application area has matured to some extent, and the expectations of ordinary iPhone users are often unreasonable. In addition, this requires that each developer ensure integrity, and there are actually many scammers outside.
The problem is that when Apple used these excuses to defend its business over legitimate competitors’ business, Xi Xilin said of the trend at a hearing in January: “I’m getting more and more Worry about Apple’s use of privacy protection as an excuse for anti-competitive behavior. “Sherlocking is just one of the ways Apple exercises power over other companies. In some cases, it is difficult to see that this is good for anyone except Apple itself.
Spotify, based in Sweden, competes directly with Apple’s own Apple Music streaming app. Last year, Spotify formally filed a complaint against Apple with the EU antitrust regulator.
It also launched a game called “Fair Playtime”(Time To Play Fair) ‘s website calls for attention to Apple’s alleged abuse of authority. The company claims that Apple has repeatedly rejected or postponed approval of updates to the Spotify app while developing Apple Music, thereby reducing the quality of its products. < / p>
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote: “They continue to give themselves an unfair advantage at every turning point.” He said that in the app store, Apple plays both “player and referee” The role of this metaphor echoes Warren’s call to split a large technology platform. Although Warren didn’t mention Apple at first, she later clarified that she thinks Apple should also be split.
Not a core supply chain participant but has real power
Apple responded with its own marketing website, touting the app store as a boon to consumers and developers. It states: “Since the launch of the App Store, new industries have been built around the design and development of applications, creating more than 1.5 million jobs in the United States and more than 1.57 million jobs across Europe.” < / p>
Nevertheless, signs of dissatisfaction are growing. On February 13, Google’s YouTube TV became the first to announce that it will not only ban new registrations through iOS, but also disable major streaming applications for existing user accounts, unless they instead pay directly to Google. In this case, there is no moral high ground: Google draws the same 30% commission from mobile apps that use its app store (Google Play) on Android.
At the game conference in Las Vegas the same week, Tim Sweeney, CEO of game developer EpicGames, blamed Apple and Google for overcharging and accused them of curbing users from using App stores, such as Etic’s own EpicGames Store, only charge developers a 12% commission.
Sweeney compared Apple’s and Google’s rates to the 2% to 3% fees charged by credit card companies. Sweeney said that in the world of games and apps, “supply chain players who are not at the core of the industry have gained undue authority.”
Of course, most developers can’t match the size or resources of those giants. At the same House antitrust subcommittee hearing that Tile testified, project management software company BasecampCo-founder David Heinemeier Hansson condemned the impact of Apple’s terms and payment policies on lower-income developers.
Basecamp is one of the companies that is trying to encourage users to sign up outside of its iOS app, and its attempts to do so have brought it more than once into the purgatory of Apple censorship. “This is a terrible experience for users,” Hanson said.
Tech companies sometimes dismiss criticism because their critics don’t understand the industry. But at the Colorado hearing, companies from Tile, Basecamp, Sonos, and PopSockets all represented tech-savvy startups. In particular, Hanson is a legend among computer programmers who invented the popular coding language Ruby on Rails.
Legislators from the two major U.S. political parties appear to be persuaded by the testimony, and in some cases, are even shocked. Although Democrats called a hearing, Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck seemed equally upset about Apple’s actions and interested in possible remedies. “I think it’s clear there is abuse in the market and action is needed,” he said.
Hanson said he was satisfied with the response and said: “There is no clear consensus on what needs to be done. But in this day and age, the fact that we can agree on this issue is in itself Amazing. “
The exact definition of “monopoly” is lacking in law
Most users probably do n’t know much about the Apple App Store behind the scenes, and even if they do, they may not care, unless more developers start to come forward and sacrifice the functionality of their apps, just like Netflix and Spotify do Like that. Any elected official voting for Apple’s supervision must explain to angry iPhone users why it’s worth it.
In the absence of new regulations, antitrust enforcement is largely a process of explaining issues. This is because the federal law that forms the basis of US antitrust policy is both clear and vague in language. The content of Section 2 of the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act is simple: anyone monopolizes or attempts to monopolize, or joins or cooperates with others
1 According to the Apple App Store policy, users cannot directly pay app developers to use apps or digital services. They can only pay Apple. Apple takes a 30% commission from it, and then pays the remaining 70 % Transferred to developers.
2 Due to reluctance to continue to pay the so-called “Apple tax”, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Kindle, etc. have cancelled the in-app purchase function from the iOS application and launched their own alternatives.
3 Smaller application developers have no choice but to abide by Apple’s rules and compete with similar applications developed by Apple. Apple’s own applications do not need to pay commissions.
4 The Apple platform is much less open than Google. Unlike its competitors, Apple does not allow the installation of any app store other than its own app store on the iPhone.
5 Critics say that the success of the app store is masking the reality that Apple is using its huge market power to bully, blackmail, and even destroy competitors and business partners, and that its hidden monopoly power is gradually becoming apparent come out.
(About 10,000 words in this article, about 15 minutes to read the full text)
Apple officially launched its App Store in July 2008, providing iOS users with their own and third-party application download services. At that time, there were only 800 applications available for download, and the downloads were about 10 million times. However, after more than a decade of improvement and restructuring, the app store has become an important pillar of Apple’s services business, which has brought rich returns to Apple.
By 2019, this online store has more than 2 million apps available for download and more than 30 billion downloads. As the scale gets larger, Apple has developed many unique policy terms for the app store, and has shown a strong monopoly power. Many developers, competitors, critics, politicians, and regulators are calling for antitrust investigations into the Apple App Store business to break the constraints of their ecosystem.
The following is the body of the article:
You may have just bought a new iPad Air for $ 500 and ca n’t wait to sign up for Netflix to watch the hit drama “Black Mirror” on its dazzling Retina Display. But first you need to download the Netflix app from the iOS app store and open it to register, but you will see a message that looks like an error.
It says: “Want to join Netflix? You can’t sign up for Netflix in the app. We know it’s troublesome. After you become a member, you can start watching shows in the app.” It’s weird that if you want to sign up for Netflix, it doesn’t give further instructions on how to register or where to register: no URL, no QR code, or even tips on how to join. If you are not a member yet, you are “game over” here.
This is not a loophole in the Apple App Store. With some exceptions, the company does not allow users to pay app developers directly for use of their apps or digital services. They can only pay Apple, and Apple takes 30% of the commission and then passes the remaining 70% to the developer. To tighten control, Apple even barred affected apps from telling users how to pay developers directly.
In 2018, due to reluctance to continue to pay the so-called “Apple tax”, Netflix followed the Spotify and Amazon’s Kindle Books app and cancelled the in-app purchase feature from its iOS app. Users must now register elsewhere, such as on the company’s website, to make the app available. Of course, because these brands are big enough, many users will unconsciously look for them.
But at the same time, smaller app developers have no choice but to follow Apple’s rules. This is true even when competing with Apple’s own similar apps. Apple apps don’t need to pay such fees,It also generally provides deeper access to the user ’s device and the information on it.
Now a few developers are talking openly about this issue, and government regulators are starting to listen. David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of project management software company Basecamp, told the U.S. House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee in January that looking at Apple App Store fees, rules, and review processes feels like an experience ” “Kafka-esque nightmare” gives a sense of absurdity and tension that is full of realistic oppression.
As one of the most beloved companies in the world, Apple has long been known for providing “user-friendly products” and has established a noble image as a “user privacy protector.” The App Store, launched in 2008, is one of Apple’s most underrated inventions, and it has driven the success of the iPhone, which is perhaps the most profitable product in human history. The idea is that Apple and developers can share each other’s success, and iPhone users are the ultimate beneficiaries.
The benefits of the app store exceed the most optimistic expectations. According to data released by market research firm App Annie, Apple customers downloaded 32 billion iOS applications in 2019 and spent a total of $ 58 billion. This has not calculated the billions of dollars in advertising revenue brought by these applications. The Apple App Store itself has become an important global industry.
But critics say that the success of the app store masks the reality that Apple is now using its huge market power to bully, blackmail, and even destroy competitors and business partners. According to them, the Apple App Store should be considered anti-competitive corporate behavior. These people are working to change the status quo by breaking the shackles of the Apple ecosystem.
Apple creates a new form of monopoly
When referring to a technology monopoly, we may think of Google ’s search engine, which performs an Internet search that accounts for an estimated 93% of all search queries. You might think of Facebook’s dominance in the social media space. Among Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, it has the four most downloaded apps in the past decade. You might also think of Amazon, whose e-commerce platform is larger than the sum of its three competitors. You may also recall the early days of Microsoft, which was the target of antitrust investigations in the 1990s, when its Windows operating system drove about 85% of personal computers.
However, you may not think of Apple, whose mobile operating system controls less than half of the US market and less than a quarter of the global market. In terms of sales, Google’s Android system is still the market leader. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has called for a spin-off of the leading Internet platform, but she didn’t even mention the Cupertino-based tech giant.
This may be because, despite cyclical controversy, Apple is still popular as a consumer brand. In any case, more and more Apple customers, business partners, antitrust experts, and lawmakers are beginning to present reasons to regulate the company.
They think that Apple may not look like a typical traditional monopoly, but when it comes to how it operates an app store, its monopoly characteristics are fully demonstrated, including collecting commissions, setting up imposed terms, and making a “black box” Editorial decisions, content restrictions, and how to organize resources to replicate popular features applied by other companies to suppress competitors.
In fact, Android does offer another option. However, because iOS users account for the majority of all mobile application revenue in the United States, developers have no choice but to develop software for Apple products. David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of project management software company Basecamp, said: “If you want to publish software, if it doesn’t appear on the iPhone, it is essentially tantamount to suicide.”
Once Apple users join the company ’s ecosystem, it doesn’t matter if they have other options on the mobile platform. In theory, they can still switch to devices running Android, and Android also provides many similar features to iOS.
But in fact, Apple Empire is based on retaining customers, that is, making its hardware, software, and services work seamlessly with each other, but not compatible with competitors’ devices and services. When you switch from iOS to Android, tasks as simple as texting a friend can become a mess. The more Apple products you buy, the less likely you are to leave its ecosystem.
Apple’s platform is much less open than Google’s: unlike its competitors, Apple does not allow any app store except its own app store to be installed on the iPhone, nor does it allow users to “side load” download from the web or elsewhere Applications.
The company stated that its goal is to ensure that users can trust every application they download, and allowing unapproved applications may expose users to the risk of privacy breaches or malware attacks. Critics counter that there are betterMethods to balance privacy and security goals and provide consumers with more open choices.
Litigations against Apple go beyond iOS. As Apple tries to reinvent itself as a service company to offset the stagnation in hardware sales, the launch of subscription services such as Apple Music, Apple TV +, Apple News +, and Apple Arade, as well as its own credit card, has led to antitrust concerns Be more urgent. What used to be a theoretical argument, that is, whether its app store constitutes an illegal monopoly, is now the target of lawsuits in many ways.
Smart use of market leading forces
Apple faces antitrust lawsuits from consumers and developers, formal antitrust complaints filed by Spotify to the EU, antitrust investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. House of Representatives Investigation by the Antitrust Subcommittee. This is not only related to Apple’s profit, but also to the future of mobile software.
Apple insists that this is not a monopoly. It strives to make the App Store a level playing field, even if its own applications are competing in this field. But in the face of unprecedented reviews, there are signs that the company, known for its stubbornness, may feel the pressure to provide proof. For example, just last week, there were media reports that Apple was considering allowing users to change the default mail and web browser settings on iPhones and iPads, replacing Apple’s own Mail and Safari with rival apps such as Gmail and Firefox.
On a Friday morning in January of this year, in Boulder, Colorado, U.S., executives from four mid-sized technology startups stood before U.S. lawmakers, proposing that several large online platforms are using their markets Power to bully, blackmail, copy and ultimately crush innovative competitors.
This unusual hearing is far from the corridors in which large tech lobbyists in Washington trade, and was chaired by the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Business and Administrative Law Subcommittee and Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Cicilline). This is the fifth and final hearing in a series of hearings on digital markets and competition, which will release a bipartisan report in April.
Lina Khan, who sits behind Xi Xilin at the hearing, is a child prodigy lawyer who has reshaped the nationTechnology and antitrust dialogue. After making headlines for criticizing Amazon’s market power, Lina accepted a position as legal counsel to the House Antitrust Subcommittee last year to help lead the investigation. As the spokesperson for the more aggressive ideology in the antitrust field, Lina’s attendance at these hearings is a signal to large tech companies that the committee is serious.
Both Google and Amazon have taken prominent positions in Boulder’s testimony, with smart speaker company Sonos blaming the former for stealing ideas and predatory pricing, while smartphone accessory maker PopSockets blaming Amazon for “laughing and bullying” . But perhaps surprisingly, the strongest arguments of many witnesses have been directed against Apple.
Tile executives at Tile, which manufacture Bluetooth tracking devices and help users find misplaced or stolen items, said the company has built a business on Apple’s platform and uses iOS applications as software companions for the hardware. Business has been good since it launched in 2014. Until June last year, there were rumors that Apple was developing its own version of Tile.
Tile Vice President and General Counsel Kirsten Daru testified that since then, Tile has been under siege. Apple abruptly stopped selling Tile’s physical devices in Apple stores, digging out Tile pie to help Apple integrate its products with Siri’s engineers. Apple has also developed an “offline find” system that competes with Tile, and it is built into the iPhone’s operating system through the “Find My” feature, which users cannot delete.
This makes the location tracking feature that is critical to Tile more cumbersome for third-party applications to protect user privacy, while helping Apple push its own similar applications. Apple has introduced new technologies that can improve the iPhone’s tracking capabilities, but there is no indication that it will be available to Tile or other developers.
Through these measures, Apple can access the wealth of information about Tile customers on the app store, including demographics, search history, and so on. Tile itself is not allowed to see this information. “We have seen Apple use its dominant market power again and again to engage in practices that put us at a competitive disadvantage,” Daru said.
Apple states that allowing third-party applications to track users’ locations can cause serious privacy issues, and said it has been working to balance user privacy with the ability of developers to make their applications as useful as possible.
In a letter from Apple to the Antitrust Subcommittee, Kyle Andeer, its vice president and chief compliance officer, stated that Apple has not restricted the ability of third-party applications such as Tile to track the location of users, It just makes sure the user knows this.
Ander wrote: “Enhancing privacy may not be in complianceEveryone’s business interests, but they are in the interest of everyone who owns a smartphone. “Apple also said that the company is working with developers interested in the” Always Allow “option for location tracking to provide default options when users first install the app.
Proud of “stealing great ideas”
Tile is not the only company complaining about Apple. Apple tends to copy key functions of third-party applications and integrate them into its operating system, which is so famous among developers that it has its own special name “Sherlocking”. It refers to the early 21st century, when Apple replaced the popular third-party web search interface Watson on MacOSX. Apple has built almost all of Watson’s features into its own features, called Sherlock.
In a 2006 blog post, Watson’s developer Karelia Software recalled that when Apple complained about Apple’s monopoly in 2002, Steve Jobs, Apple’s then CEO, did Out of response. According to Karelia founder Dan Wood, Jobs said at the time, “I think so. Do you know those small carts where people stand on pumps and move on the tracks? That’s Carrelia, and Apple is a steam train with tracks. “
From an antitrust perspective, this metaphor is almost perfect. It was the monopoly power of the railways in the late 19th century and their ability to establish or destroy companies using railways that stimulated the birth of America’s first antitrust law.
Here is another famous quote from Jobs. In 2006, when talking about Apple, Jobs said that he quoted Picasso’s famous phrase “imitation by the great, plagiarism by the great”, “we always maintain this shamelessness for stealing great ideas.” Company executives later tried to cleverly use the semantics of this sentence, but it is undeniable that most of today’s iOS is based on what was not originally Apple’s idea.
To be fair, this is true of many successful companies. Business success has always depended on marketing and execution, not just innovation. Nonetheless, the history of the Apple App Store has been flooded with companies that have gained fame only because Apple has integrated and profited from their inventions.
Tile considers it a typical representative of this type of company. The same is true of Blix, which developed a company called BlueMail’s email application, which includes anonymous login capabilities. Blix said that Apple copied its ideas in its latest sign-in feature, Sign In With Apple, and now requires every application developer who allows social login to use this feature. Blix said that within days of announcing this feature in June 2019, Apple kicked BlueMail out of the app store.
Apple insists that for security reasons, its offer to help Blix return to the store was rejected. The company said in a statement to the media: “The Apple App Store has a uniform set of guidelines that applies equally to all developers and is designed to protect users. Blix is proposing to overturn basic data security protections that could cause users to Of computers are exposed to malware that could harm their Mac computers and threaten their privacy. “
Blix responded to its delisting by suing Apple for patent infringement, and in November 2019 wrote an open letter to CEO Tim Cook and recruited other developers who felt they were pitted Join their actions. In February 2020, Apple resumed BlueMail in the Mac App Store, but Blix said it would not drop the lawsuit. Blix co-founder Dan Volach said in a statement that Apple’s response proved the value of being outspoken and brave. “When we wrote to Apple’s developer community, BlueMail was back in the app store within a week,” he said.
A “milkman” who no one dares to mess with
For many developers who rely on the Apple App Store to make a living, being outspoken seems like a risky strategy. As Ida Tin, CEO of period tracking app Clue, said in an interview in September 2019: “When you have only one milkman, you don’t want to annoy the milkman.”
At that time, Apple had just announced a similar menstrual tracking feature in iOS, which clouded Clue’s future. However, Apple provided new period tracking data to Clue and other third-party applications through its HealthKit programming interface (API) at launch, which at least gave them the opportunity to compete with their products.
According to Apple, app stores are all about competition and consumer choice. Submitted to the House of RepresentativesIn response to the Monopoly Commission, Kyle Andeer, Apple ’s vice president and chief compliance officer, wrote, “Since we created the app store, we have seen competition as a way to help our users access the best apps. The best way, even if these apps compete directly with our similar apps. Our apps compete with apps from third-party developers in every category, and in many cases, developer apps are more successful. “
Apple Corps said that when Apple rejects competitors ’application updates or runs as they think, it always keeps users’ interests in mind. But developers have also benefited a lot, and Apple says that over the years, it has paid more than $ 155 billion in app store revenue to third-party developers.
The company also states that most apps (84%) in the app store are free, so there is no cost to Apple. These apps (including big-name apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest) make money by selling ads, and Apple’s main benefit is just to make its devices more useful and attractive to buyers.
Apple and its minimalism are popular for a reason. Apple’s ability to integrate new features into its operating system is worthy of recognition, even if it makes some applications obsolete. For example, if people want to turn their iPhone into a flashlight, they need to open the app store, browse the flashlight applications launched by developers they have never heard of, and try to find out which are legitimate and which are trying to send them spam ads or mining They are data, which is usually difficult.
Although it may be unfair for Apple to provide its own applications with access rights that third-party competitors do not have, it is undoubtedly important to figure out which third-party applications deserve what level of access. Something more tricky. It may sound simple to leave all these decisions to the user, but the premise is to ensure that this application area has matured to some extent, and the expectations of ordinary iPhone users are often unreasonable. In addition, this requires that each developer ensure integrity, and there are actually many scammers outside.
The problem is that when Apple used these excuses to defend its business over legitimate competitors’ business, Xi Xilin said of the trend at a hearing in January: “I’m getting more and more Worry about Apple’s use of privacy protection as an excuse for anti-competitive behavior. “Sherlocking is just one of the ways Apple exercises power over other companies. In some cases, it is difficult to see that this is good for anyone except Apple itself.
Spotify, based in Sweden, competes directly with Apple’s own Apple Music streaming app. Last year, Spotify formally filed a complaint against Apple with the EU antitrust regulator.
It also launched a game called “Fair Playtime”(Time To Play Fair) ‘s website calls for attention to Apple’s alleged abuse of authority. The company claims that Apple has repeatedly rejected or postponed approval of updates to the Spotify app while developing Apple Music, thereby reducing the quality of its products. < / p>
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote: “They continue to give themselves an unfair advantage at every turning point.” He said that in the app store, Apple plays both “player and referee” The role of this metaphor echoes Warren’s call to split a large technology platform. Although Warren didn’t mention Apple at first, she later clarified that she thinks Apple should also be split.
Not a core supply chain participant but has real power
Apple responded with its own marketing website, touting the app store as a boon to consumers and developers. It states: “Since the launch of the App Store, new industries have been built around the design and development of applications, creating more than 1.5 million jobs in the United States and more than 1.57 million jobs across Europe.” < / p>
Nevertheless, signs of dissatisfaction are growing. On February 13, Google’s YouTube TV became the first to announce that it will not only ban new registrations through iOS, but also disable major streaming applications for existing user accounts, unless they instead pay directly to Google. In this case, there is no moral high ground: Google draws the same 30% commission from mobile apps that use its app store (Google Play) on Android.
At the game conference in Las Vegas the same week, Tim Sweeney, CEO of game developer EpicGames, blamed Apple and Google for overcharging and accused them of curbing users from using App stores, such as Etic’s own EpicGames Store, only charge developers a 12% commission.
Sweeney compared Apple’s and Google’s rates to the 2% to 3% fees charged by credit card companies. Sweeney said that in the world of games and apps, “supply chain players who are not at the core of the industry have gained undue authority.”
Of course, most developers can’t match the size or resources of those giants. At the same House antitrust subcommittee hearing that Tile testified, project management software company BasecampCo-founder David Heinemeier Hansson condemned the impact of Apple’s terms and payment policies on lower-income developers.
Basecamp is one of the companies that is trying to encourage users to sign up outside of its iOS app, and its attempts to do so have brought it more than once into the purgatory of Apple censorship. “This is a terrible experience for users,” Hanson said.
Tech companies sometimes dismiss criticism because their critics don’t understand the industry. But at the Colorado hearing, companies from Tile, Basecamp, Sonos, and PopSockets all represented tech-savvy startups. In particular, Hanson is a legend among computer programmers who invented the popular coding language Ruby on Rails.
Legislators from the two major U.S. political parties appear to be persuaded by the testimony, and in some cases, are even shocked. Although Democrats called a hearing, Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck seemed equally upset about Apple’s actions and interested in possible remedies. “I think it’s clear there is abuse in the market and action is needed,” he said.
Hanson said he was satisfied with the response and said: “There is no clear consensus on what needs to be done. But in this day and age, the fact that we can agree on this issue is in itself Amazing. “
The exact definition of “monopoly” is lacking in law
Most users probably do n’t know much about the Apple App Store behind the scenes, and even if they do, they may not care, unless more developers start to come forward and sacrifice the functionality of their apps, just like Netflix and Spotify do Like that. Any elected official voting for Apple’s supervision must explain to angry iPhone users why it’s worth it.
In the absence of new regulations, antitrust enforcement is largely a process of explaining issues. This is because the federal law that forms the basis of US antitrust policy is both clear and vague in language. The content of Section 2 of the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act is simple: anyone monopolizes or attempts to monopolize, or joins or cooperates with others