Think someone needs to smack the plaintiffs round the head with a "it's not a crime to hold a monopoly, it's a crime to abuse a monopoly" mallet.

No DRM on music and the web as an open environment for app developers, as well as "iPhone apps" and "music downloads" not being industries in themselves means this is a pile of non-issue.

And buying the iPhone is an option to everyone, unlike the times when we were forced to use crappy windows machines.

Apple can do what they want. Don't you like it? Don't buy it.

Microsoft also has the right to do the same thing with windows 8, as they should. We have choice now.

Same, please edit your tag line. Did you mean to say "Apple asks for" instead of "Apple has for"? I usually don't comment on typos but please proofread your articles, especially the short ones.

As for those consumers who want to go to a different store for iPhone apps all I can ask is why? The App Store is web based as would any other potential competitor. Do they expect to get those $0.99 apps for $0.98?

This is not about consumers. This is about lawyers trying to make big bucks on class action lawsuits. Ever get a legal notice about those based upon stocks that you've owned? The shareholders get a few pennies per share and the law firm gets $200 million. In most cases, it's not even worth my time to fill out the forms.

Having said that, I think there is a slight chance a court could rule that Apple's insistence on exclusivity is abusive. Think about it: in the iTunes store, you can sell an MP3 track via Apple and also sell it elsewhere. Apple only gets their 30% on what you sell in their store. Why should the app store work any differently?

On the other hand, if Apple did permit apps to be sold elsewhere, someone could open a copycat app store and charge developers 20% instead of 30% and that could be considered unfair (although not illegal). Perhaps there's a middle ground where developers can sell their apps on their own websites, but not via other distributors. I think this would be especially helpful to those developers whose apps don't "float to the top" of Apple's site. With 300,000 apps on Apple's site, most apps have virtually no visibility. And I bet the top 100 apps generate 90% of Apple's revenue anyway.

I have recently begun to refuse to to participate in class action suits. It does me no good and only serves to cause prices to increase, IMHO, as lawyers get huge pay days and nothing changes.

Kill the lawyers first.

There have been suits before about Apple's vertical integration and Apple always wins them. VI is not illegal and not antitrust. Nor is being popular, like iTunes is, anti-trust.

The only thing that Apple might get dinged on is if they have a favored nation clause that constricts the pricing for other ports of an item. So say you see Angry Birds for iOS for $4.99, the FNC demands that Angry Birds for Android can't be less than that. But that doesn't seem to be the argument in this case but rather that developers have to go through Apple if they want to be 'legit'

Quote:

Originally Posted by zoetmb 

I think this would be especially helpful to those developers whose apps don't "float to the top" of Apple's site. With 300,000 apps on Apple's site, most apps have virtually no visibility. And I bet the top 100 apps generate 90% of Apple's revenue anyway.

Many of those apps don't have any kind of advertising going on. You can't just make an app, dump it in the store and expect to make your fortune. 

The ironic thing is that before the Apple App Store, Jobs used to poke fun at carriers and their app "walled gardens"... and yet all he did was turn around and create his own, even higher walled garden.

(It's higher, because carriers allowed smartphones to download apps and media from any store, not just theirs.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlituna 

Many of those apps don't have any kind of advertising going on. You can't just make an app, dump it in the store and expect to make your fortune. 

It used to be that the app seller did that for you in return for their percentage.  When I started selling software in the 1980s, distributors paid for magazine ads, and they would also go to computer shows and demonstrate and sell your app. 

Granted, they took a higher percentage, but you consistently made money, because your products stayed in the public view.

Of course, it was also a different market, without hundreds of thousands of competitors.

The upshot is, yes, you're so right.  Advertising is key.

So Apple is getting sued for insisting products sold in their App store has the lowest price. I'm kind of slow to understand how is that hurting consumers.