PayPal Helped Spur EU Antitrust Complaint Against Apple Payments (slashdot.org) 21
PayPal helped spur a formal antitrust complaint against Apple and its iPhone payments system by raising concerns with the European Commission, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: European regulators hit Apple with a so-called statement of objections on Monday, arguing that the iPhone maker abuses its control over mobile payments. The complaint centers on the company reserving the iPhone's tap-to-pay abilities for its own Apple Pay service, rather than letting rival payment platforms use the feature. PayPal, which has its own payment service, was one of multiple companies making informal complaints about the situation to the commission, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. PayPal offers a tap-to-pay option on Android phones and wants to be able to offer the same feature on Apple's iPhone.
Can't be so. (Score:1)
Re: Can't be so. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's happening is that the EU is treating this as two seperate markets. The first market is the hardware for phones, the second market is the software that goes on them. The argument is that Apple are using their clout in the hardware market to give them an unfair edge in the software market.
While it's easy enough to create a start-up and break into the software market, it's much harder to do this in hardware and so that market will naturally have fewer competitors. The argument is that this shouldn't be used to limit other Company's access to the software market. Apple's argument over a walled garden with easy interaction between their software products is not accepted. Firstly because they already allow 3rd-party software on their devices. And secondly because those who want this can still stick to Apple software if they choose, regardless of the openness of the interfaces.
Re: (Score:3)
What's happening is that the EU is treating this as two seperate markets. The first market is the hardware for phones, the second market is the software that goes on them. The argument is that Apple are using their clout in the hardware market to give them an unfair edge in the software market.
While it's easy enough to create a start-up and break into the software market, it's much harder to do this in hardware and so that market will naturally have fewer competitors. The argument is that this shouldn't be used to limit other Company's access to the software market. Apple's argument over a walled garden with easy interaction between their software products is not accepted. Firstly because they already allow 3rd-party software on their devices. And secondly because those who want this can still stick to Apple software if they choose, regardless of the openness of the interfaces.
Fairly well stated.
If anyone argues what Apple is doing is not illegal/free markets/just a business decision/you're fee to go elsewhere, then you'll be happy to know that these practices are being scrutinized and possibly deemed illegal by a governing body looking to expand access to markets in areas with high barriers to entry that create monopolistic or duopolistic control over said market, thus providing greater overall customer choice. Choose to stick with Apple apps if it makes you feel safe.
One of Ap
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What's happening is that the EU is treating this as two seperate markets. The first market is the hardware for phones, the second market is the software that goes on them. The argument is that Apple are using their clout in the hardware market to give them an unfair edge in the software market.
Which is wrong. The appeal of Apple products is their walled garden, and the tight integration of software and hardware that comes from that. If the iPhone was running Android and had to compete solely on the quality of it's hardware, it would not be nearly so successful. The same would be true if Apple laptops were running Windows, they'd sell but nearly as well. Hardware wise there isn't really anything special about iPhones, iPads, or MacBooks.
The EU has it backwards. Apple isn't using it's hardware to
Re: Can't be so. (Score:5, Informative)
What's happening is that the EU is treating this as two seperate markets. The first market is the hardware for phones, the second market is the software that goes on them. The argument is that Apple are using their clout in the hardware market to give them an unfair edge in the software market.
Which is wrong. The appeal of Apple products is their walled garden, and the tight integration of software and hardware that comes from that.
That's two separate appeals. The tight integration of hardware and software has nothing whatsoever to do with the walled garden and everything to do with not allowing iOS to run on third-party hardware made by multiple vendors.
And you're both wrong. This has nothing to do with the software market. This is about the mobile payments market. The courts would generally assert that Apple's behavior is preventing a service from competing against Apple Pay. The fact that mobile payment systems are typically implemented in software running on the device is entirely an implementation detail. It's the service that matters, not the specific implementation thereof.
If Apple wants to implement a mobile payment system standard in which Apple just proxies the information to a specific server, and allows users to add other companies' servers in some way, that would theoretically be an entirely reasonable solution that wouldn't involve any third-party software running on the iOS device at all. And that would satisfy the requirements of antitrust law, so long as it is done in a way that allows for reasonable competition and doesn't give Apple any unfair advantages (including, but not limited to processing fees).
So again, this is not about software except insofar as Apple's architectural decisions make it so. A company cannot generally make decisions that lead to a particular antitrust-law-violating outcome and then claim that the outcome is unavoidable because of conditions that they created.
If the iPhone was running Android and had to compete solely on the quality of it's hardware, it would not be nearly so successful.
To be fair, that's mostly because it would be one of a dozen almost identical phones at that point. The OS is its only real point of uniqueness.
The EU has it backwards. Apple isn't using it's hardware to sell software. It's using it's software to sell hardware.
By using "software" so broadly, it loses all meaning. They are using their operating system to sell hardware. It is a serious stretch to claim that they are using Apple Pay to sell hardware. After all, clearly if one mobile payment system can sell hardware, than supporting multiple mobile payment systems should sell *more* hardware, in the absence of some compelling reason to limit it to one.
And I see no obvious compelling reason for Apple to limit mobile payments to a single vendor other than that they can make more money from Apple Pay + hardware sales than from hardware sales alone, and they believe that the loss in sales from not supporting other companies' mobile payment systems is more than made up for by the increased revenue from Apple Pay.
Therefore, from an antitrust perspective, Apple is very clearly using their hardware business to limit competition in mobile payment systems. This is just about as open-and-shut a case as you can get, IMO.
But ultimately this antitrust case isn't really about any of that. What's really about is protectionism. The EU has struggled to compete in the tech sector and has made a concerted effort these last few year to go after a mostly foreign industry for the benefit of their domestic businesses. This case is just one piece of that larger effort.
No, ultimately this is about Apple abusing its very large market share to be able to do anything it wants to do, and shut out competition in other areas of technology in favor of it
Re: (Score:1)
They are using their operating system to sell hardware.
An operation system is only as valuable as the ecosystem of applications that support it. Without apps it has no value. Just ask Nokia and Microsoft. People aren't buying iPhones for the operating system. They're buying them for access to Apple's walled garden. And it's that walled garden that sets it apart from all the Android competition. Apple has a reputation for being very strict about what it allows on it's app store, and for putting a heavy focus on user experience. Whereas the Android app store is r
Wow. Neato! (Score:2)
Jack T. Ripper: "You know, those two Williams', Hare and Burke, they're a bit shady. I think something should be done about them."
Predicted response from Apple: (Score:2)
Apple: "It's political crap!" [theguardian.com]
Xenophobic PayPal against Apple ? (Score:2)
You have a PayPal account.
You move to another country.
You try to change Country settings in PayPal - they are grayed out.
You contact PayPal support. They ask you for documents proving residency/citizenship in new country.
Result: You are still registered to old country but now you are charged fees and taxes for BOTH of them.
Official stance: All Immigrants are tax evading bad hombres.
Apple: still had to contact support but the account was transferred right away and as a bonus all old Mac OSX & Apple softw
surprising (Score:1)
Perhaps PayPal needs tech support (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been using tap to pay with my iPhone since before Apple had its own credit card. I also use it on my Apple Watch as well. I have multiple credit cards loaded into my Wallet and it works just fine. In fact, it works so well that I accidentally charged our recent dinner out onto my company credit card instead of my personal one.
If what PayPal is complaining about is that they can't load their own app to use tap-to-pay, I'm perfectly fine with them not being able to do so. Security is bad enough, as it is
Can't we regulate PayPal (Score:2)
With people getting cut off from their money, with no recourse to dispute, surely we should be including PayPal in getting their house in order. I am not saying Apple doesn't need regulating, but coming from PayPal, it is kinda rich.
Forced switch from single store to mall owner (Score:4, Interesting)
All the digital platforms, be it Google's Android play store, Apple's mac/ios app store, Microsoft's Windows and Xbox store, Sony's Playstation store, etc, should be forced to switch from a store to an open mall model, with the platform provider hosting it own stores upon the mall in competition with anyone else being able to set up a store on the same platform.
With the exception of the platform providers own store and own apps, platform providers do do not get revenue direct from app creators/software vendors, but from rent from stores in the mall.
As mall owner the platform provider can set requirements for app behaviour, but it must be the same for all stores even the platform provider's own store. Platform providers and stores must not do exclusive deals that restrict stores from selling any particulate vendor's software, or setting prices.
Platform providers get rent from store owners. Stores in the mall, including the platform provider's store, enter a dutch auction every quarter to decide their rank and position in the platform mall list of store. Top stores get bigger banners etc.
Yes it means that the Platform provider's store is probably always going to be top and most prominent of the Mall list & metaverse.
iPhone PayPal Problems (Score:1)