Apple Faces Inevitable Antitrust Headache as EU Launches App Store Investigation (venturebeat.com) 96
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is facing an antitrust investigation that could have been predicted the moment it announced it was getting into the music streaming business four years ago. The company can most likely expect a similar investigation down the road after it launches its video streaming service later this year. The first investigation follows a complaint lodged by music streaming leader Spotify earlier this year, according to the Financial Times. Citing sources, the newspaper reported that the European Commission's competition division has officially opened the case, which will likely involve talking to other services that have been quietly chafing under Apple's App Store rules.
[...] One can debate the relative merits of Apple Music and Spotify in terms of their design, subscription models, and payment to artists. But the reality is that there is nothing revolutionary about Apple Music. Had it been launched by another startup, it certainly wouldn't have 56 million subscribers by now. In Silicon Valley, leveraging one's platform is standard practice and applauded. The EU takes a very different view. European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices, which they argue harm innovation, and therefore indirectly limit choice.
[...] One can debate the relative merits of Apple Music and Spotify in terms of their design, subscription models, and payment to artists. But the reality is that there is nothing revolutionary about Apple Music. Had it been launched by another startup, it certainly wouldn't have 56 million subscribers by now. In Silicon Valley, leveraging one's platform is standard practice and applauded. The EU takes a very different view. European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices, which they argue harm innovation, and therefore indirectly limit choice.
banding together (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We are indeed banding up together through our governements to stand up for ourselves.
Will you still think this once it all goes away after Apple has paid a sufficient penance (in the form of campaign contributions and donations to the right charities, of course!)?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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So regulating companies is almost the opposite of "nanny state". Companies are not people.
Yeah, but you're attacking the wrong ones. These people sell trinkets. What are you doing about ensuring unfiltered access to the internet? And transparency, where the hell is that?!
Besides all that, despite all your parties, you are still electing a bunch of right wing fascists. You have the most tangled alliances in your parliamentary "coalitions" that never last until the next regularly scheduled election. You're no
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They're doing this. Whether you realize it or not, more and more of the Internet as we know it is accessed through specialized mobile apps. Therefore, Apple, by limiting what types of apps can be in their store and preventing anyone from installing apps through competing app stores, represents the single biggest threat to unfiltered Internet access for its users.
After
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You missed the part where Apple's market share is large enough that Apple banning their app from the app store caused them to make massive changes to their content policy. The business reality is that Apple's app store policies have wide-ranging effects on the Internet as a whole that
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Good luck convincing the roughly 45% of Americans who use iPhones to do that. Go ahead. I'll wait.
That's the problem with your argument. In theory, you're correct. In practice, you're hop
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Ask Kim Dotcom what happened as soon as their talks with the music industry failed and he announced that was ready to launch an independent music streaming service of his own targeted to top artist leting them keep 90% of their song's proceeds.
But somehow I don't envision elite troops and blackhawks circling Tim's Cook mansion.
Re:banding together (Score:4, Interesting)
I’m a little torn. I don’t think they have created anything nearing a dominant position, nor have they done much to negatively impact Spotify beyond what any other streaming competitor could do. Amazon is a much clearer target since they bundle a lot of the streaming services with Prime— and I actually use Amazon compared to both Spotify and Apple Music (despite being heavily locked into the Apple ecosystem).
The Apple Store commission thing is a little easier to understand, but with subscription commissions dropped to 15% I’m not so sure that the price could be much lower without discriminating against smaller developers and services.
I value the degree of merchant confidence and convenience I get using the App store as a customer, and it makes me more likely to make a payment. Managing payments across many different sites gets to really be a pain when things change.
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Iâ(TM)m a little torn. I donâ(TM)t think they have created anything nearing a dominant position
Apple has a near-perfect monopoly on distributing apps for/to iDevices. Scarcely anyone has a jailbroken iPhone.
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Iâ(TM)m a little torn. I donâ(TM)t think they have created anything nearing a dominant position
Apple has a near-perfect monopoly on distributing apps for/to iDevices. Scarcely anyone has a jailbroken iPhone.
However, the iPhone is not the entire market, and is only about 25% so it's hardly the dominant platform.
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However, the iPhone is not the entire market, and is only about 25% so it's hardly the dominant platform.
It sounds like you're arguing that iPhone users shouldn't have rights because they're a minority, but I for one think that they should be isolated from certain negative effects of their purchasing decisions. Not the paying for shiny shiny, but the getting screwed out of using their own devices as they see fit. There's nothing which forces the iDevices to be inherently closed.
Re: banding together (Score:2)
This is exactly how anti-monopoly legislation is supposed to work, yes. If you grow to become a monopoly or near-monopoly in a market, harsher rules apply to you than the rest.
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There are many markets. There's the market for smartphones. Apple only has a fraction of that. Then there's the market for iOS apps. Apple has 100% of that, because they've written the OS to not allow anyone else to sell apps for it. That's a perfect monopoly. Now they're using that monopoly to give themselves an advantage in a different market (streaming music services). That's exactly the kind of thing antitrust law forbids you to do.
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Isn't that because Apple gave us the features we jail broke for? Notifications, demos, folders, etc were why I jailbroke several of my iPhones. The last 3 I haven't.
Re:banding together (Score:4, Interesting)
[...] nor have they done much to negatively impact Spotify beyond what any other streaming competitor could do.
The big advantage Apple has is in pricing.
Here in the US, Apple Music costs $9.99 per month, as does Spotify. Yet, if you use Spotify's iOS app to sign up, it's $12.99 per month. Why? Because Spotify has to pay Apple to use their service. This is not optional for Spotify--they have to use Apple's system.
As an aside, take a look at the App Store page for Apple Music. [apple.com] Do you see that $9.99 listed anywhere? Now take a look at the App Store page for Spotify. [apple.com] Notice how the prices are listed multiple times and different and it's quite the mess?
"Gee, Apple's is free. Spotify's costs somewhere between $7.99 and $16.99. I think I know which I'll be using."
Why isn't Apple listing it's service as $9.99 per month?
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As a Mac guy, I'm not much of a gamer. You'd have to explain that...
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Apple pays the same cost of processing for their app, just under a different profit center.
Most of Spotify’s customers are ad-supported rather than subscription based, which kills much of the complaint’s merit— they are already shifting money around between sources to pay the bills.
To me, Amazon’s problem is classic monopoly behavior, although the EU doesn’t seem constrained by that.
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Neither nor. There's no need to band together when the government actually enforces the regulations they put in place for your protection in the first place.
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Spotify's argument is basically, "We need to charge more for our services than the market will pay, but competition from Apple keeps us from doing so."
So, yeah...consumers are going to come out ahead on this one once EU fucks its people over yet again.
Re: banding together (Score:2)
You should feel sorry for her anyway. She made some really poor life decisions long before I came along.
Big Companies are EU's ATM (Score:1, Funny)
Apple, it's your turn, hold onto your wallet! The EU needs some money!
Crony capitalists (Score:1)
Spotify wants the EU to solidify it's hold on the market. That is what this is about.
Also Spotify doesn't make a profit, and they pay the artists very little. Nothing to see here.
Companies shouldn't be able to block third-party (Score:3)
Re:Companies shouldn't be able to block third-part (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's only a partial list of the differences between the apps which are blessed and those which aren't. We covered the far longer list in the Slashdot story which first described Spotify's complaint.
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Apple doesn't have to help their competition-- it's their online resource. As to those that believe Apple is a copycat-- who cares? Price delivery selection availability are the key metrics, whether it's Walmart, Best Buy, or an online retailer like Amazon.
Oh, morality? Well, yes, Amazon, Walmart, etc., are part of the corporate welfare system. That said, neither Pandora, Apple, or Spotify harm consumers (only musicians) with their product. So, back to price, delivery, selection, and availability as metrics
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This isn't net neutrality.
This is one retailer wanting special position within the confines of another. Spotify has to fly on its own, just as Apple has had to do. They sucked for a long time (some say, still do, but a different thread).
Mass can equal muscle. Is that fair? Is it fair that I can lift 300lbs and you can't? Spotify shouldn't get advantage based on Apple's (with horrible iTunes software) based market building. If they can be smarter than Apple (wouldn't take much!!!) then they should do it.
Re: Companies shouldn't be able to block third-par (Score:2)
That's your opinion. The EU may disagree.
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The EU may well. They've made some bright decisions, and others that are clearly anti-competitive. It is my opinion, and I stand behind it.
Re: Companies shouldn't be able to block third-par (Score:2, Funny)
Bullshit. The laws exist so that large companies with a lot of money can be shaken down whenever the EU needs some cash.
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Spotify can fulfill through the web. Indeed they *should*.
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There is the constant problem of individual liberties, and liberty of the masses. Having your phone being a security problem, can also affect others phones as well, as well send a lot of extra networking traffic on infrastructures that others are also paying a lot of money too. Now because you have screwed up your phone, and sucking up everyone bandwidth, other people get annoyed, they won't blame you, who needed off brand Gameboy emulator, but they will blame their Cell phone maker, or their Carrier for
apple store only is ok with no content censorship! (Score:2)
apple store only is ok with no content censorship!
Have an adults only room
Have an open political room
Level playing field. (Score:3, Funny)
Good. That's what I expect from the EU. They should make sure that the playing field is even and that everyone has the same opportunity. And they should probably do more. Why isn't there a european Facebook? Or a european Google? Or Amazon? Apple? Microsoft?
Why isn't there a single european tech company on the top 10?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Um, the answer is actually because they died under regulation that limited flexibility and innovation. Nokia and Erikson were innovators for a while, along with a few other names I forget now.
Maybe a different question to think about is why Israel is able to compete.
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Nokia died under regulation, not a series of shit phones that were utterly eclipsed by iPhone and Android?
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And some astonishingly inane decisions. For example are the time when Nokia was one of the most well known brands in the world, they attempted to rebrand as ovi.
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Because a level playing field results in many small companies instead of a few large megacorporations.
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I'd almost like to see Apple give the finger to to the EU (along with Google) and block them out....
Re:Level playing field. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't there a european Facebook? Or a european Google? Or Amazon? Apple? Microsoft?
Because we have a level playing field here. Why do we need a European Amazon when we have over 10 companies that provide that service in a competitive manner each themselves doing over $1bn revenue a year? Coolblue ships faster than Amazon does, even with Prime membership. Why am I missing Amazon again?
As for why we don't have more tech companies, we do. We have plenty. They all have a parent company now along the lines of Apple (acquired 6 EU based tech companies in the past 12 months), or Microsoft (shame what they did to EU developed Skype), or speaking of Amazon, they aren't even in the games market so why were they so quick to acquire the EU developed cloud gaming platform GameSpark?
Speaking of games, ever heard of Simplygon? The EU developed software for game asset optimisation? Well if you haven't don't worry you won't. Microsoft acquired them, scrapped their software and used the staff to help bring you the wonders of Paint 3D!
So back to your question of "Why isn't there a european Facebook? Or a european Google? Or Amazon? Apple? Microsoft?"
Multipart answer:
a) We don't want them
b) Nothing good comes from having them
c) Because these giants are so quick to devour promising competitors and unfortunately the acquisition of a European company for it's technology rather than competition is not something the EU regulator would prevent.
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Because we have a level playing field here. Why do we need a European Amazon when we have over 10 companies that provide that service in a competitive manner each themselves doing over $1bn revenue a year? Coolblue ships faster than Amazon does, even with Prime membership. Why am I missing Amazon again?
Uh..Amazon is a cloud services company that does a little retail on the side.
Why kind of cloud services does "Coolblue" offer?
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Um. Did you ever consider looking up the facts before posting your own made up "facts" and presenting them as true? In their most recent quarter [venturebeat.com], AWS accounted for 13% of Amazon's revenue. Subscription services (mostly Amazon Prime, which includes some cloud services but is mainly retail) was another 7%, and advertising was another few percent. The rest is all retail.
It took me about one minute to find these numbers.
Re: Level playing field. (Score:2)
And how much of its PROFIT does it account for?
Yeah.
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Uh..Amazon is a cloud services company that does a little retail on the side.
Cool story. But I'm going to go with their mission statement which says otherwise over some stupid comment by a random internet idiot who doesn't know how to form a coherent argument.
But congratulations. You have missed the point so fundamentally that you can counter your own argument simply by reading my original post.
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We have successful tech companies, but often they are local to one or two countries.
We also have many if the world's biggest game studios. Siemens is huge in industrial tech too.
So it really depends how you frame the question.
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. Why isn't there a european Facebook? Or a european Google? Or Amazon? Apple? Microsoft?
Why isn't there a single european tech company on the top 10?
Because American tech companies took all the best European talent.
Big head, Big headache (Score:1)
10BILLION$ FINE NEXT??? (Score:1)
"European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices"
& easily take billions from big US companies each time???
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"European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices"
& easily take billions from big US companies each time???
And how many $billions did the US fine VW?
Monopoly vs not (Score:2)
Harming choice (Score:2)
Had it been launched by another startup, it certainly wouldn't have 56 million subscribers by now. In Silicon Valley, leveraging one's platform is standard practice and applauded. The EU takes a very different view. European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices, which they argue harm innovation, and therefore indirectly limit choice.
The same would be true of many other things, for instance FAT32 and later ExFAT - neither are particularly good filesystems, not especially suited to modern types of media, not very robust and in the case of fat32 with limitations rendering it useless in todays world of multi terabyte drives and multi gigabyte files, also necessitating hacks on various devices to keep under the file size limit (eg video cameras, especially high def ones)...
The only reason either of these filesystems are ever used, is becaus