They 100% control the food sold inside their theatres! It’s their shop, they can decide what’s sold in it.
People have a choice: it’s called Android.
I don’t see why a private company that isn’t a monopoly should be forced to open up their proprietary products to direct competitors.
This is a very slippery slope and the people advocating for it in the case of Apple will be screaming about how unfair it is for the government to get involved when it happens to them.
Let’s say you have a successful startup selling something like an API marketplace.
One day the government says:
It’s unfair to MalwareAPI Co that you lock them out of the market and require a fee. You now have to let them sell their viruses to your customers and you don’t even get a cut.
Once you become large enough to have a say in how significant chunk of online commerce is done by inserting yourself as the mandatory 3rd party in any transaction that takes place on the platform, you stop being "just another business" and become a "gatekeeper", or in Apple's case specifically a TWO sided market.
"Gatekeeper" is an EU legal term, which I'm aware doesn't apply in the US, but the term is on point. These gatekeepers are nothing more than unelected, unregulated, and unaccountable points of taxation that limit and control the flow and type of trade that is allowed to happen in the economy. Through network effects, they keep a stranglehold on both sides of the TWO-sided market because one of the sides (providers) doesn't have any alternatives and the other side (users) is chained to the platform through a variety of lock-in effects.
Financial transactions? Give Apple 30%. Porn? Apple says no! Perhaps 20 years from now, the only way to get a tech job will be to go through a an intermediary called Apple Jobs, and they'll take a 30% of your salary. How would you like that?
People have a choice: it’s called Android.
I don’t see why a private company that isn’t a monopoly should be forced to open up their proprietary products to direct competitors.
This is a very slippery slope and the people advocating for it in the case of Apple will be screaming about how unfair it is for the government to get involved when it happens to them.
Let’s say you have a successful startup selling something like an API marketplace.
One day the government says: It’s unfair to MalwareAPI Co that you lock them out of the market and require a fee. You now have to let them sell their viruses to your customers and you don’t even get a cut.
Would you make the same arguments? Why not?