This is markedly different then, for example, Google altering search results to promote their own products, because Google owns something like 90% of Search.
In the retail/wholesale model, the retail store buys the third party products and their own store brand products, and sells them both. It might favor the store brand with more promotion or better shelf placement, but both products appear on the shelves, and the third-party has generally already been compensated for their goods (or is contractually owed compensation). In uncommon situations, such as with new products, compensation may be contingent on products sold through (to end customers), but that is not the norm.
In the appstore model, third-party app makers sell apps in Apple's store. Apple sells apps in Apple's store and promotes its own apps ahead of competing apps. It even promotes unrelated apps ahead of competing apps in a blatant attempt to push competitors off the first 2 pages of search results (i.e., off the shelf). Apple also frequently bans apps that compete with Apple's own apps or features, even if such competing apps existed for years before Apple's own apps.
Any one of the aforementioned acts by Apple could be treated as an antitrust issue. And that's not even a comprehensive list.
Well no. What you cited was related to the Supreme Court's analysis of the App Store case, but that was only related to the issue of standing.
How it differs from brick and mortar stores buying inventory isn't relevant to the actual merits of the case, which hasn't been in court yet.
The "market" is smaller than you think. A classic way to determine alternatives to a product is by asking "if I raise the price of all apps, how many people will buy something else?" Iphone owners are kinda stuck eating the increase, aren't they?
Apple controls 100% of the iPhone app market. An iPhone owner made a $1000 investment into their phone and cannot just switch to Android. Apple takes advantage of that fact for their own benefit.
And everyone makes a choice when they purchase a product— you could say invest in a product—if they want to buy into that.
Of course it costs money to buy something different. The salient point is that there is a obvious and competitive choice before you buy, that Apple does nothing to restrict you from making that choice before you buy, and that you can switch if you feel like it, which makes it not a monopoly.
Monopoly is not defined as the lack of compatibility between two competing products. Monopoly is also not defined as having a closed ecosystem.
I think it’s fair to argue if you think it should be illegal to have closed ecosystems. Personally I strongly disagree because there are clear trade-offs involved and the market should be able to decide if it wants a closed ecosystem product offering from Vendor A or an open ecosystem offering from Vendor B.
The problem with a closed ecosystem is when it is combined with a monopolistic market. In this discussion I believed the two points have become conflated, but while Apple certainly has a walled garden, there is compelling evidence the smartphone market is highly competitive.
Imagine a world where Apple continues to clamp down on 3rd party services that compete with their own offerings, like Spotify. Apple could completely ban Spotify from selling subscriptions outside the App Store, and raise their fee to 70%. Google, wanting to push their own Google Play Music service, eventually adopts similar rules on Android, or perhaps implements them in a theoretical successor like Fuchsia.
This would basically mean you cannot build a music streaming service without also building your own mobile platform. That in turn would effectively mean we can only ever have as many streaming services as we do mobile platforms.
Even though neither Google nor Apple have 80%+ marketshare, this behavior strikes me as deeply anti-competive. It's not a world I want to live in.
Offering rebates for using your product and not using someone else’s, for example, may be illegal if you are a monopoly but not illegal if you are not.
There are innumerable things a given company could do that harms its competition. Up to a point, that’s kinda the whole idea! It doesn’t become illegal unless it is done by leveraging a monopoly market position.
