Microsoft in the web browser market.
Epic Sues Apple and Google due to Fortnite getting pulled [2020-08-13, 2021-05-03]
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Microsoft in the web browser market.
Ike Turner
Veteran
Unless I missed something..Microsoft had more than 90% of the OS & browser market when they got prosecuted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#/media/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
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Plenty of fines have been passed out for anti competitive behaviour to a variety of companies in a variety of industries. Often to companies working together on price fixing. Such as Dram manufacturers.
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Name them. Then we can look up what kind of market share they had.
Collusion price fixing may not require being a monopolist but basically a cartel fixing prices is engaging in monopolist anti-competitive behavior.
OPEC is a cartel. They agree to prices and calibrate their production to achieve a certain target price. Or they try to, because many of them will just go over their quotas when they need income.
I'm bored, but not that bored.
Sorry. I'm not playing. If you actually care google antitrust fines. I'm sure you will find several examples.
As long as Apple isn't incompetent the capital barrier to entry to catch up or enter the market just keeps growing. Between IP and and the limited amount of superstars Apple is building a runaway lead in processor technology. Occasionally those superstars will try to split off if they think they have some revolutionary advantage for some more profit than just a wage, but those are few and far between ... getting fewer as IP becomes an ever tightening noose.
Dram price fixing case. Samsung ($300 million), Elpida($84 million), Hynix, Micron and Infineon AG ($160 million) were all fined for fixing the prices of Dram between 1998 and 2002.
And I personally received a $25 settlement check from the class action lawsuit.
I'm pretty sure all 5 of them weren't monopolies.
Do processors still drive the mobile phone market?
I think people buy new phones (market is saturated so it's mostly upgrades) because it can do new things, i.e. tentpole features that the manufacturers and OS platform vendors are able to sell.
Right now, the thing that makes the most use out of processors are photos, with all the extra image processing (night shots, high resolution, fake bokeh, etc).
Is Apple the clear leader in phone photo processing? No I think Samsung and Huawei are very-well regarded. Not sure how much more Google is pushing the Pixel. Huawei may have problems getting access to the fastest SOCs because of the Trump administration bans.
People think AR or VR on phones will be the features which drive new demand in high-end phones. We shall see. If people get annoyed with masks in public, how is widespread use of AR or VR goggles going to fly?
In any event, I would think there are far more Qualcomm processors shipped when you combine North America, Europe and Asia, though I'm not sure maybe Mediatek ships a lot of product in Asia and some developing markets.
Unless you're saying that at some point, Apple SOCs will leave Qualcomm SOCs so far behind that people start switching in mass from Android to iPhone, I don't think people care what's running in their phones.
So there was an antitrust action and several settlements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing
In this case it was 5 companies conspiring to fix prices, limit supplies as necessary.
Then in 2018, a law firm filed a class action suit on behalf of consumers.
But the original antitrust action occurred because of complaints by Dell and Gateway, maybe others.
Sure, these are anti-competitive practices and none of the individual companies constituted a monopoly. But collectively, they had the power of a monopoly.
Apple isn't a monopoly by itself. So if anyone wants to prove they're price-fixing, they'd need to show proof that Apple and Google agreed to each charge 30% and make it difficult for Fortnite to side load or make its own store on Android, so that for mobile, they pretty much had to pay 30% to both Apple and Google.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Does it even matter? Just because you don't have a monopoly doesn't mean you can do whatever you want.
As I posted two pages back, Apple even forces companies to offer in app purchases or it will simply take the app down (WordPress).
Who knows if it holds up in court. In the US in particular the size of your bank account seems to dictate justice as much as anything but it's a fact Apple has little morality as a company.
As I posted two pages back, Apple even forces companies to offer in app purchases or it will simply take the app down (WordPress).
Who knows if it holds up in court. In the US in particular the size of your bank account seems to dictate justice as much as anything but it's a fact Apple has little morality as a company.
No, it's just one of a couple reasons it's so incredibly capital intensive to be able to play at the high end. Another reason is mapping, again hugely capital intensive.
A high end device should really be high end across the board ... branding and marketing can fudge a lot, but the gap with Apple is taking a toll, especially combined with privacy concerns. Apple is going to run away with the high end market, the market is fundamentally broken and there is no solution in sight. Only slightly through fault of Apples, but broken nonetheless.
Third party stores are not a solution to that problem, but it would slightly contain the damage.
They do well enough and any lead their competitors have is not because of technology they have a lock on which would require 100s of billions to break. Also Apple has leads in other important areas such as FaceID (though luckily there seems enough prior art that other companies will be able to do 3D camera face authentication) and payment.
Their strong arm deals for Apple Pay are another hugely important barrier to entry for competitors, which is going to increasingly wear down competition.
Mobile phone market is completely broken.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
You mean Apple pulled it's turd back as even they realized this is not the kind of news they need now.
How can something like this even be the result of "confusion"?
And the fact they can't even mention they got paid services in their app without Apple removing it still says enough about the kind of company Apple is.
Ike Turner
Veteran
Microsoft's opportunistic PR stunt
Note that this is only about Unreal Engine support on iOS & MacOS (Microsoft shitty Forza Street mobile game is UE powered..) & using this a as proxy to pressure Apple to allow Xcloud on iOS. MS's PR team has been working overnight lately getting their "unofficial PR channels" (Tom Warren @ the Verge, Windows Central etc) to post pro Epic & anti Apple pieces.
Note that this is only about Unreal Engine support on iOS & MacOS (Microsoft shitty Forza Street mobile game is UE powered..) & using this a as proxy to pressure Apple to allow Xcloud on iOS. MS's PR team has been working overnight lately getting their "unofficial PR channels" (Tom Warren @ the Verge, Windows Central etc) to post pro Epic & anti Apple pieces.
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I would say that Apple and maybe Samsung are the only ones making any real money at it.
Not sure about the Chinese brands, though Huawei may be in trouble, at least until Trump is out of office. But they're huge in other areas so they will be around long after Trump is gone, whether in a few months or 4 more years.
But there are still dozens of brands serving different price bands, making enough to sustain a business. Are any of them threats to reap tens of billions a year in profits? No but doesn't mean they don't have sustainable business models.
There was a time when Apple harvested most of the profits in computers over $1000, with not even double-digit market share in that segment. Doesn't stop Dell or Lenovo or others from continuing to ship tens of millions of computers each.
If 5G lives up anywhere close to the hype, there will be a long upgrade cycle for all mobile phones. Again, your characterization of the market being broken is that one company makes way more in profits than other companies but there's enough money for Qualcomm to continue to develop their SOCs and basebands. If it was truly broken, you'd have a situation where Qualcomm would stop investing billions in R&D every year. And the large majority of phones shipped every year are not iPhones.
Samsung continues to make phones costing well over $1000. Chinese brands also make flagship phones but underprice them so they don't top $800. MS is going to be shipping a $1400 phone. Now if they all drop out of this price segment and only Apple remained, that could be a concern. But they could be selling $800-900 phones which are comparable to iPhones over the $1000 mark.
I don't know how Apple Pay is a big deal. I love it but ran into a lot of places in different countries where smaller businesses won't use it because the banks in their countries impose surcharges which result in double-digit percentages. Or so they claimed.
Most people are either using regular EMV or contactless credit cards, not bothering with mobile wallets. Pandemic has boosted contactless payments in general but there are still plenty of situations where you can't use mobile wallets. I'd have to guess that mobile wallet transactions are still in the single-digit percentage-wise.