How do you install applications on iOS without involving Apple?
How do you transfer your iOS apps over to non-iPhones?
Until there is a compelling answer to all three of those then Apple is still a monopolist (when it comes to phones, but similar lists apply to their other product segments).
Same things could be said if one switches the brand names to Nintendo, Sony, Amazon etc.
The problem is that your questions are arbitrary and at best approximate the ideas of what you think a monopolist is rather than what is established in law. Merely moving the goal post doesn’t make a monopolist.
Furthermore your questions have no bearing on the company in question: a company building its own devices and ecosystem has no responsibility to facilitate onboarding of the technology of others: things which they do not know about, could never plan for and have nothing to do with their operations.
> Same things could be said if one switches the brand names to Nintendo, Sony, Amazon etc.
Yes. This is a discussion about Apple, but they are certainly not alone. I don't see how that exonerates anyone involved?
> The problem is that your questions are arbitrary and at best approximate the ideas of what you think a monopolist is rather than what is established in law. Merely moving the goal post doesn’t make a monopolist.
Can we agree that someone is a monopolist if they hold disproportionate control over a market?
So the remaining question is whether Apple does that. To me, the answers to those questions mean that iOS devices must be seen as their own market, rather than as part of a wider smartphone market (as Apple and their fans are so happy to claim). And considering that Apple has set themselves up to have 100% control I don't see any other viable conclusion.
> and at best approximate the ideas of what you think a monopolist is rather than what is established in law
If the law as is can't keep up then the law ought to be fixed.
> Furthermore your questions have no bearing on the company in question: a company building its own devices and ecosystem has no responsibility to facilitate onboarding of the technology of others: things which they do not know about, could never plan for and have nothing to do with their operations.
Keep rehashing the same tired arguments, you'll need them when antitrust authorities start shooting. They are coming for Apple and Google, both in EU and US. Lowering appstore fees was just the first skirmish.
