Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.
The big disagreement is whether the market should be defined as "iOS apps" or whether the market should be defined as just "smartphone apps" or "smartphones, which have apps."
Does Apple have monopoly power over the "iOS apps" market? Yes. Do they exclude competitors from that market? Abso-fuckin-lutely.
But it seems to me like the understanding has always been that people do have a choice. If they don't like Apple's control over the iOS App Store, they can buy an Android. Apple, after all, does not have a majority share of the smartphone market.
Under that understanding, the market is smartphones, and apps are just a feature of the smartphone.
But you don't /really/ have a choice. Once you've dumped more than a few hundred bucks into the ecosystem (or in some friend's cases, thousands) you literally must throw that away to use a different store. You cannot say: "Oh, I'm not going to the Apple store today, I'm going to use the Microsoft one." There's no competition, nor opportunity for competition. The broader smartphone app markets do not compete.
"Choice" is not defined as "the easiest thing to do", strangely enough. I'll admit, I'm a bit surprised to see this idea that the US government should mollycoddle all of its citizens through life on HN.
I've spent orders of magnitude more money on my console and the games I bought for it than I've ever spent on any app store. Where is all the outrage over Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo's oh so hideous monopolistic practices?
The same is true for game consoles. If you buy an Xbox you cannot decide to buy Nintendo games for it. Yet I don't think anyone would claim "games for Xbox", "games for Playstation", and "games for Nintendo" are three separate markets with no competition (as opposed to one large market for "video games").
You mean, I can't go to GameStop, Walmart, or KMart, or wherever to buy xbox games? That's crazy. I thought I could.
In all seriousness though, I can go to other stores to buy things. In this case, you must go to the Apple Store, you can't buy iOS apps anywhere else. (at least officially)
Except in order for that game to be in a GameStop, Walmart, or KMart, the developer of the game has to sign a publisher agreement with Microsoft. This agreement gives Microsoft a royalty for every copy sold, plus approval rights over the final game, marketing, and packaging materials.
So, no, a developer cannot distribute a game for Xbox without Microsoft's approval.
This is also largely irrelevant to the question of whether the market of "games for Xbox" is a separate market from "games for Nintendo" or whether they're actually both competitors in the "video game" market.
Apple's market power seems to fit this legal definition quite well: https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/
Monopoly is a control or advantage obtained by one entity over the commercial market in a specific area. Monopolization is an offense under federal anti trust law. The two elements of monopolization are (1) the power to fix prices and exclude competitors within the relevant market. (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen or historical accident.