Apple-Google Mobile 'Duopoly' Faces UK Antitrust Scrutiny (bloomberg.com) 71
Google and Apple face a sweeping probe into the "duopoly" power of their mobile ecosystems, in the U.K. antitrust watchdog's latest attack on Silicon Valley. From a report: The increasingly tech-focused Competition and Markets Authority opened a 12-month market study into broad aspects of the iOS and Android systems, saying it feared the companies' dominance is stifling competition. The investigation adds to the regulator's separate investigations into both tech giants. "Our ongoing work into big tech has already uncovered some worrying trends and we know consumers and businesses could be harmed if they go unchecked," CMA Chief Executive Officer Andrea Coscelli said in a statement.
The CMA uses market studies to gather information before upgrading investigations. The mobile review comes as the U.K. watchdog seeks to move to the forefront of tech regulation after emerging from the shadow of European Union regulators at the end of the Brexit transition. The authority is preparing to set up a tech-focused unit and has warned that the largest companies will face extra scrutiny of everything from mergers to monopoly behavior.
The CMA uses market studies to gather information before upgrading investigations. The mobile review comes as the U.K. watchdog seeks to move to the forefront of tech regulation after emerging from the shadow of European Union regulators at the end of the Brexit transition. The authority is preparing to set up a tech-focused unit and has warned that the largest companies will face extra scrutiny of everything from mergers to monopoly behavior.
Closed hardware. (Score:4)
Closed hardware nature of both platforms otherwise we'd be discussing the open-source mobile software ecosystem.
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lol yes, they have. Are you even serious? They both conspire together to decide what individuals and organizations are allowed access to the platform and those that aren't. Entirely closed ecosystem that needs forced open by law. I'm glad the EU has the guts to do it.
I am dying for apple to be forced to allow other stores or sideloading.
Yet dont say that in the Ars forums, the rabid cult members there will even ban you for calling that out.
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What capability would be provided by allowing side loading?
Are you really yearning to run apps that scour your address book and message history?
Is that worth being able to edit interface colors or record phone call audio?
And if they opened up side loading, they would start bitching about forcing iOS to be open source.
And then Xcode would end up being $1200/yr. or iPhone would have to run some awful Linux UI.
It's a damn miracle computer in your pocket, but people just want to bitch and destroy the market
to s
Re: Closed hardware. (Score:2)
Hey Tim, wanna knock off Parlor off our platform for the lulz? -Larry
I will be highly surprised. This will go no where.
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What capability would be provided by allowing side loading?
Install whatever Jobs zombie decides that I cant thru the store.
Are you really yearning to run apps that scour your address book and message history?
Is that worth being able to edit interface colors or record phone call audio?
Oh please, stop the fear mongering bullshit lies, the OS should still warn you if an app is trying to perform such access.
And if they opened up side loading, they would start bitching about forcing iOS to be open source.
Nothing wrong with that, actually.
And then Xcode would end up being $1200/yr. or iPhone would have to run some awful Linux UI.
It's a damn miracle computer in your pocket, but people just want to bitch and destroy the market .001% of the market, or are just shills for the competition.
to satisfy the wants of
Spoken like a true blue rabid cult member....
Re: Closed hardware. (Score:2)
Oh please, stop the fear mongering bullshit lies, the OS should still warn you if an app is trying to perform such access.
They could do it the way Android does where when the app attempts to access it, you get prompted for whether to approve it, and denying it does nothing more than disable the app functionality that requires it.
If IOS doesn't already do this (it didn't last time I had an iphone) then you probably already have apps stealing your contacts without you realizing it. The recent epic/apple suit showed pretty well that apple really doesn't block apps for doing this kind of thing after all, they just pretend to.
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What capability would be provided by allowing side loading? Private app stores. Install whatever app you want, not what you're given permission by the censors to install.
Are you really yearning to run apps that scour your address book and message history? No and thankfully there are permission settings for these sorts of things.
Is that worth being able to edit interface colors or record phone call audio? Straw man.
And if they opened up side loading, they would start bitching about forcing iOS to be open sou
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Xcode would end up being $1200/yr? Where in the right mind did you even come up with something so absurd? We have over 40 years of home computing that just how completely out of touch with reality you are if you really believe that.
People don't want to destroy the market, they want to help it. When iPhone was the biggest phone in it's first few years, iPhone's didn't change much
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> What capability would be provided by allowing side
> loading?
Why, the capability to reduce the iPhone to a spyware and malware infested tool for Chinese and Russian hackers to steal our personal information, commit identity theft, and empty our bank accounts, of course. Sorry, not sorry... but I remember the cesspool of dodgy-at-best, mostly awful, and often hostile, shovelware that was Cydia. I don't want my iPhone reduced to a Huawei or Xiaomi workalike.
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> What capability would be provided by allowing side > loading?
Why, the capability to reduce the iPhone to a spyware and malware infested tool for Chinese and Russian hackers to steal our personal information, commit identity theft, and empty our bank accounts, of course.
Side loading != no sandboxing.
Ostensibly, each app store could live in an entirely separate virtual filesystem hierarchy, communicating with daemons by exposing only specific locations where those daemons can provide named pipes or socket files. They can have an entirely separate keychain, like different accounts do on macOS. And so on.
Sorry, not sorry... but I remember the cesspool of dodgy-at-best, mostly awful, and often hostile, shovelware that was Cydia. I don't want my iPhone reduced to a Huawei or Xiaomi workalike.
Then don't side-load. Nobody is forcing you, even if your platform allows it. You not wanting to do something is never (by itself) a valid reason to prevent someone else
Re: Closed hardware. (Score:2)
In any case there is plenty of stuff that isn't allowed on iOS that has nothing to do with security. They still have a blanket ban on all emulators right?
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What capability would be provided by allowing side loading?
Are you really yearning to run apps that scour your address book and message history?
Is that worth being able to edit interface colors or record phone call audio?
Why would sideloaded apps be able to do that? I mean they could ask for the permission but you would be free to tap "no".
And if they opened up side loading, they would start bitching about forcing iOS to be open source.
And then Xcode would end up being $1200/yr. or iPhone would have to run some awful Linux UI.
You mean like Android, which is open source, has a better UI and the development tools are all free?
Re: Closed hardware. (Score:2)
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[emphasis mine] Citation needed.
Re: Closed hardware. (Score:2)
They don't need to collude. The people that matter in either company are on the identity politics train. They'll either denounce the same people or will copy the other to avoid being denounced.
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How is Android a closed hardware platform? There are literally tens (hundreds?) of different hardware manufacturers that use Android. Android is an open-source mobile software system. Several companies actually customize the base Android OS with features unique to their devices.
In the case of Apple and iOS you are right that that is a close hardware/software platform.
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There isn't an "Android hardware platform". Android is an operating system.
You can build your own hardware to run Android, e.g. a Raspberry Pi or a RISC V board.
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Closed hardware nature of both platforms otherwise we'd be discussing the open-source mobile software ecosystem.
How have Apple, let alone Google done that?
Apple and Google use someone else's hardware. That is either a monopoly like ARM or a competitive market like the manufacturers, there's more than just 2 companies making entire phones out there. We've never had so much choice when it comes to new phones.
It's the services, if anything that cause a duopoly... and it's only Apple that is abusing their service component to lock you into their ecosystem (yes, it's easy to leave Google... it's just that there are
A few years late and a euro short (Score:2)
Seems like if you were at all worried about a "mobile duopoly", the time to speak out and act was back when Microsoft still had a viable mobile platform you could have help propped up via word and deed.
These days, what are you really going to do about there only being two choices?
Money (Score:2)
These days, what are you really going to do about there only being two choices?
Extract money from them and give it to your constituents to pretend to build a third platform.
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Extract money from them and give it to your constituents to pretend to build a third platform.
And then bitch about the triopoly.
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Re: A few years late and a euro short (Score:2)
So you don't think that Palm was killed due to mismanagement by HP? (motto: Proudly fucking up since at least spinning off Aligent)
And to a lesser extent, I wonder if the clean break played a factor. Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, and Symbian all had been around prior to the iPhone and all died. And I feel like they were at least slightly dragged down by their existing investment and commitment to what they already had, which became obsolete overnight. Just like if there were a new radical shift, Apple a
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So you don't think that Palm was killed due to mismanagement by HP? (motto: Proudly fucking up since at least spinning off Aligent)
I think WebOS was killed off by being "only web" about a decade before JavaScript engines got to the point where that was practical. The iPhone would probably have died on the launchpad were it not for the promise of third-party native apps.
For supporting evidence, consider sales figures before and after Apple's App Store announcement. In the half a year prior, Apple sold 1.39 million copies of the original iPhone. In the next six months, they sold 4.71 million copies of that same model. Looking at all
Re: A few years late and a euro short (Score:2)
I don't know. I remember the original iPhone and I got the 3G. There was some desire for apps based on experience on the Palm, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile platforms, but I don't think anyone foresaw what happened. Rather, I think the increase was due to people with older phones that had decided to wait and see having waited and seen and fallen in love with the iPhone. Also the transition to 3G helped. The app market did rapidly explode, however, that's true.
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I remember how badly everybody reacted when Apple said "web apps only". Folks tried and failed to build anything useful. Usable JavaScript-based games were pretty much out of the question.
I mean, I'm sure that a lot of Mac users would have bought them anyway, but assuming Android allowed native development as expected, I'm pretty sure that without native app capabilities, the lack of usable games on iOS (not to mention apps like Netflix) would have ensured that it remained a minor niche platform.
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Nah, even the hardcore Apple fans would have gone Android if they couldn't even get programs for their iPhone. That was a change that they absolutely 100% had to make.
Today it might actually work, because the browser is richer, though you would still have an inferior experience. But back then? No way, no how.
WebOS was my favorite (Score:1)
Don't forget Palm with WebOS.
I forget the timing of that. wasn't that around even before the iPhone even? It seems like it was around too early, before there was any notion iPhone / Android would become a dominant pairing... or maybe just after the iPhone came out.
Regardless I agree with you that would have been the ideal choice to bring up to add something unique to the mixture of smart phone OS's. I really thought they have a lot of great design choices in there, and it was truly worth of the Palm nam
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HP bought it not knowing what to do with it. When their tablet didn't meet their sales goals they jettisoned it without giving it a chance.
It is still maintained and anyone can pick it up and make a phone or tablet if they want. Samsung's Tizen [tizen.org] is also OSS and freely available. It runs their smart watches. They had a phone but only ever sold it in India IIRC.
The truth is nobody wants to start from scratch with no ecosystem in place. BlackBerry and Pa
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They aren't looking at the "mobile duoploy". They are looking at behavior WITHIN the duopolies ecosystems, like the App Store and Play Store.
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Seems like if you were at all worried about a "mobile duopoly", the time to speak out and act was back when Microsoft still had a viable mobile platform you could have help propped up via word and deed.
And the thing is, had it been done like that, people would have been in the streets screaming "FREE MARKET!!", or something about "winners and losers!", and how the government was imposing over-reach into an industry that has every right to self-regulate.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and most first world nations are just always going to give benefit of the doubt to the industry to self-regulate. I mean, every industry that's been given the benefit of the doubt continues to prove why we shouldn't do that, but t
Scrutiny yes, but what is the goal? (Score:2)
If the purpose is to investigate if Google or Apple did anything illegal, yes investigate. If the goal is to force more competitors into a market that was created by market forces then no.
From my perspective, the duopoly exists because, frankly, the competitors sucked. When Apple unveiled the iPhone the big players in smartphones were: Blackberry, Microsoft, and Nokia. These competitors are no longer the big players the mostly due to their own mistakes.
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This is worth considering. Microsoft was (relatively still is) in the same business and pretty much gave up. If a company with Microsoft's finances gives up on a market there really won't be room for new startups.
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The issue does not seem to be the 'mobile phone' market. In the mobile phone market you are correct, it was created by market forces. Nothing wrong with that. The issue, once again, is the app stores. The dominance (especially in the case of Apple) of the App Stores is not because of 'market forces', it is because competition is blocked. And no, the Play Store is NOT competition for the App Store, and vice versa.
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There is nothing stopping you from using an alternate app store on Android. Are there many people that use an alternate? No, but that doesn't mean that you are locked into the Google Play app store.
I would agree that Google Play isn't a competitor with the Apple App store though.
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I just said what they are looking at. What you think is legal doesn't matter in the slightest. They are INVESTIGATING, not accusing (yet). Their investigation might turn up problems for Apple, Google, both, or neither. From https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Andrea Coscelli, Chief Executive of the CMA said:
“Apple and Google control the major gateways through which people download apps or browse the web on their mobiles – whether they want to shop, play games, stream music or watch TV. We
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Are you kidding? Name a single store where you can get an iOS app. Oh, there aren't any? Hmm, I wonder why that is.
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Yes, I understand exactly what a walled garden is: a fiction invented in an attempt to excuse anti-competitive behavior. It has no legal basis at all. Sorry, fanboy, but you don't just get to declare yourself exempt from laws by claiming 'walled garden'. This investigation (and similar investigations and lawsuits around the world) will determine whether or not 'walled gardens' have any legal standing or if they are simply anti-competitive ploys.
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You're missing the point, the problem isn't that there's a duopoly, a duopoly or even a monopoly is not in itself a problem. This was the problem with Microsoft in the late 90s; not that they had a monopoly on operating systems, but that they abused that monopoly to crush competitors elsewhere - i.e. in the web browser market. The monopoly isn't the problem, the monopoly abuse is.
The same applies here, the problem is that they're abusing this duopoly to fix prices; this is exactly what the music industry di
Re: Scrutiny yes, but what is the goal? (Score:2)
Google and Apple don't need to collude to charge what is pretty reliably the retail cut.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2... [ign.com]
Whether it's justified is certainly a matter for debate.
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The same applies here, the problem is that they're abusing this duopoly to fix prices; this is exactly what the music industry did, they conspired to keep CD prices artificially high amongst themselves rather than compete
Please cite any evidence you have that Apple and Google have abused their stores to "fix prices". Considering both allow developers to see their own prices even allowing apps to be be free. Also present this evidence to the UK commission.
Re: Scrutiny yes, but what is the goal? (Score:2)
There doesn't need to be collusion. An ordinary retail store for most anything tends to take between 30-50% as its cut. Some things vary (clothes tend to have higher markups, food, lower). This was the source of Amazon's discounts back in the day: they sold books at 30-40% off because they sold at a substantially smaller markup.
Apple's cut for apps is pretty clearly based on their cut of music before the iPhone came out. And that was based on the cut of a typical real world music store.
Google is probably c
Re: Scrutiny yes, but what is the goal? (Score:2)
That, and, most consumers are perfectly happy with the current situation!
Christ almighty, how many phone models do you need to choose from? Sure, the platform choices may be Android or Apple, but so fucking what? The other choices FAILED. Enough people didn't like them.
Most users don't care that there is only one App Store. Some developed might care. Users don't. Some LIKE that there is one source for apps. Makes it easy. Most users are NOT technodorks!
Same for the vertical integration. For many, if not mo
maybe its time for open hardware (Score:2)
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PinePhone meets the criteria of running one's own OS. But yes, they use ARM, use a generic chip for BT/wifi and offload to a Qualcomm-based LTE modem.
Bunnie's Precursor with RISC-V implemented on a FGPA sounds like a cool project. But at $565, I don't have the spare change for a concept.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/su... [crowdsupply.com]
Limited space (Score:1)
There is limited space for OSes. Market forces will naturally consolidate around one or two, and itâ(TM)s very hard for more to be successful. Regulating room for a third OS will be a failure, so the only result will be platform regulation. So I guess the question becomes, aside from extracting rent from these companies what do you want them to do?
Libya is really scared. (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda seems as if... (Score:3)
...the market has spoken.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-... [statcounter.com]
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Which 'market' has made the App Store the dominant market for iOS apps? How about the Play Store for Android apps? That is what they are investigating.
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The Google Play Store and the Apple App Store are not comparable from a monopoly investigation stand point. The Play Store is on Android, and on Android there are actually a LOT of competing app stores available you can buy.
iOS is a bit different because if you have iOS you can ONLY buy from Apple's store.
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The key word is 'investigating'. Maybe they will find that Google is not being anti-competitive and Apple is. Or maybe neither are. Or maybe both are.
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That's actually a great exhibit. Android and iOS combined barely cross 50% of the total OS market share. And probably 5% or more of the "Android" line is really Amazon Kindle, which isn't controlled by Google at all.
"Google" itself has a lower footprint (Score:2)
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Apple deliberately controls their ecosystem, but nobody forces you to distribute on their platform if you don't want to.
It's not about Apple, it's about Apple's users, and you can't distribute to Apple's users without using Apple's store. Talk of "Apple's platform" is just a way to justify abuse of their users.
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politcal duopolies seem to be fine, however (Score:3)
an even larger duopoly problem that plagues both the US & UK is that of the political parties
"... it feared the companies’ dominance is stifling competition ..."
could be re-worded
"... it feared the gov't's 2-party dominance is stifling democratic representation ..."
but nobody in power has much motivation to stop the gravy train; there's much more to be gained by creating distractions and bogeymen
Nothing says gov desperation like "duopoly" (Score:2)
This is like, "I have the slightest itch ever and I need the world's cooperation to scratch it."
When it happens (Score:1)
When the EU forces Apple and Google and whomever else to "open up" and allow anyone who wants to run an App Store, install apps from whatever source, access any hardware on the devices without restriction, etc., and it later determines that such entities STILL can't "compete with" Apple and Google because most real consumers don't care about any of that shit and are perfectly fine with the CURRENT situation, the EU will STILL blame Apple and Google for operating unfairly and fine the shit out of them.
Succes
Android is open source. (Score:2)
Android is Open Source. You can literally download the whole thing and make your own "My OS is Totally not Android" OS for free. Literally any company with any amount of resources at all could do this.
And lots of companies have. MS, Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, Amazon, Firefox, Ubuntu and many others all made OS competitors. The problem is getting enough hardware manufacturers to support it. Amazon has to do that alone, and are the only ones that have had some level of success with the Kindle. But the barriers
Duopolies are better than Monopolies though (Score:2)