this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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It can be an Apple issue if Androids market share diminishes to below 20%
Google has the money to lobby congress for antitrust suits and Apple may have to pay Google to keep Android alive
Android market share will never diminish below 20%, at least not worldwide.
Even in the US where iOS is the most dominant Android has a majority market share of 53.9%, iOS has around 45.6%.
When you look at it worldwide, Android has more than 2/3rd of the market with 70.5% market share, while iOS 28.8%.
Apple needs a lot more competitive pricing if they want to ever overtake Android, especially outside of the US. Sure they are popular among US teens who mostly care about what they see on TikTok or in the hand of their classmates, but the world doesn't work like that.
Thats not how anti trust works in capitalism.
It still boggles my mind that you can get in trouble because your competitors can't keep up with you or have a worse product than you. I get that this doesn't really happen often, but it's both funny and sad.
It’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not just a question of market share, but whether you use your market share to make it impossible for others to compete against you.
For example, Microsoft was getting itself into trouble in the late 90s because they essentially used their dominant position in the OS market to push Internet Explorer— making it next to impossible for other browsers at the time, like Netscape, to compete. For example, they made it difficult for other companies to install their software when their own competitive alternatives were included for free, and in some cases, impossible to remove (explorer was fully integrated into Windows at this time and you couldn’t remove it).
There are plenty of companies that essentially own entire markets. Google for example something like 85%. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Almost no one remembers you used to have to pay for Navigator, but they couldn't compete with free and built in IE.
Heck with windows 95 you used to have to pay for IE, you had to get the Windows 95 plus package or you had to buy IE separately.
You cant. Thats just cause people dont understand anti trust law. You can absolutely have monopoly by competition. If you win the market the government isnt gonna stop you.
Antitrust measures are when you actively take away ways of competing. Like if apple paid carriers to not sell androids.
it still boggles my mind how people don't understand how a company having a monopoly isn't a good thing. prices go up, innovation goes down because you have no options.
How is it a monopoly tho? There are shitload of smartphone companies and Android still has more users worldwide than iOS.
We are talking about a hypothetical suit here, not an actual antitrust case
iMessage is vendor lock in, not being better. Apple is just as bad as 90s Microsoft on vendor lock in and EEE.
vendor lock in is not what you think it means.
I know full well what it means. Did you also sleep through the docs where Apple said they use iMessage as a way to prevent people from switching? What Apple does here is no different than Microsoft making using anything but IE on Windows in the 90s miserable. Or how to this day they keep obfuscating Office formats while pinky promising for real this time they'll support open document standards.
Being successful isn’t illegal. But using your success to stamp out the competition is illegal.
And one simple messaging app can kill Android? Then my point stands even more, Google is even worse at making products then.
It's the only reason Apple even exists today.
It’s not an issue of antitrust unless it can be shown that they used unfair/anti competitive “monopoly power”. People misunderstand that. Monopolies are not illegal per se, abusing monopoly power is.
Does Google do such a thing for Bing? Why did Yahoo search die?
They’ll just take it out of the Google search money.
I’m pretty sure Apple has more cash than Google and people seem to find Apple more likable.
I'll never forget a few months ago on Reddit I saw a dude comment the only reason so many teenagers have iPhones is because they usually don't pay for it themselves, and they're gonna switch to Android when they get older.