>Is it fair? Probably not. But I see no reason to believe it's illegal.
If they take it too far, that's how you get into antitrust territory. That's why Epic's court case against Google ruled in Epic's favor, as it was giving paying off devs to not make their own app stores and blocked OEMs from making deals with other studios.
So I'd say this puts apple on thin ground. I'm sure this won't be the last high profile lawsuit over the app store this decade.
The case against Google had a completely different fact pattern. One that resembles the US v MS more.
Google essentially pressured and bullied OEMs and other third parties into doing stuff that was beneficial to Google in exchange for licenses and special deals.
At that point, you’re throwing your weight around, something that Google “had” to do because they started with a relatively open platform.
Apple, on the other hand, preempted needing such tactics by making their ecosystem closed and heavily regulated from the onset when they were still nobodies within the market. That makes it extremely difficult to prove antitrust issues.
Had Apple, say, increased the commission from 30% to 33%, then it would’ve been pretty close to an open and shut case because then it’s easy to argue that Apple threw its weight around once everyone was inside the ecosystem.
But the opposite happened.
This is also one of the reasons why everything Apple does is restricted and limited from the onset. It’s always easy to loosen the reigns later, but at their size, you can never go the other way without risking antitrust liability.
FWIW, even MS, with their egregious behavior, got a lot thrown out on appeals and prevented being split up. The DOJ ended up settling instead.
This (a policy of charging some devs more/less than others) isn't Apple bribing devs to not compete with them, and it isn't a series of shady backroom deals. It's a relatively straightforward and transparent price discrimination scheme, and I have a hard time imagining why this would put Apple at risk of an unfavorable antitrust ruling if the complete lack of any alternate app stores didn't.
Where I imagine Apple could get into trouble is if they systematically turned a blind eye to commission-dodging by specific entities as part of a trade to ensure their market dominance. Unlike Google, though, I'm not even sure which entities Apple could bribe that would risk looking like a trust.
>'s a relatively straightforward and transparent price discrimination scheme, and I have a hard time imagining why this would put Apple at risk of an unfavorable antitrust ruling if the complete lack of any alternate app stores didn't.
Like any discrimination case, it depends on the subject of discrimination and potential victims. So I would say that discriminating with the largest streaming service can be a way to lock out the rest of that market from competing properly.
>Where I imagine Apple could get into trouble is if they systematically turned a blind eye to commission-dodging by specific entities as part of a trade to ensure their market dominance
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. There's no hard evidence but that's what would be subpoena'd in court.
Ironically enough, Google is the biggest smoke signal here. Since court cases reveal they have some sort of deal with Apple to power search. That deal + potential discrimination with Google submitted apps can lead to those exact issues Google is under fire for.
If they take it too far, that's how you get into antitrust territory. That's why Epic's court case against Google ruled in Epic's favor, as it was giving paying off devs to not make their own app stores and blocked OEMs from making deals with other studios.
So I'd say this puts apple on thin ground. I'm sure this won't be the last high profile lawsuit over the app store this decade.