Dutch regulators near antitrust decision in Apple investigation

I wonder if Costco is being investigated because they only allow their own gift card or Visa cards, not Amex (anymore), MasterCard, or Discover. Isn't this the same thing? Costco has a contract with Visa and only Visa (Visa controls all cards distributed by banks and other financial institutions, they are all Visa cards). Isn't this payment system anti-competitive? This type of payment process happens all over the place so why would, in this case the Dutch, any country only go after Apple for providing a single payment system when other companies do the same thing? Oh, wait, because they want a cut of Apple's money, that's why.

If Apple cannot generate revenue from the App Store then what is the business motivation for having it? Is the App Store to be regulated into a free service for developers that Apple is required to provide and lose money on? Apple gets nothing for its efforts? It certainly looks that way. You know it wasn’t that long ago that developers had to fend for themselves and do all of the marketing and rely on word of mouth to get traction for their softwares. How many small time developers went belly up because they didn’t have the resources to promote their products?

rob53 said:

I wonder if Costco is being investigated because they only allow their own gift card or Visa cards, not Amex (anymore), MasterCard, or Discover. Isn't this the same thing? Costco has a contract with Visa and only Visa (Visa controls all cards distributed by banks and other financial institutions, they are all Visa cards). Isn't this payment system anti-competitive? This type of payment process happens all over the place so why would, in this case the Dutch, any country only go after Apple for providing a single payment system when other companies do the same thing? Oh, wait, because they want a cut of Apple's money, that's why.

It's not the same thing. 

If you don't like Costco rules, you can shop elsewhere. 

That option isn't open to iPhone users. 

Saying that consumers can choose an Android device isn't valid IMO because the situation we are touching on (in general, not the Dutch case per se) is not made clear to users prior to purchase.

Now, if it were made available in clear and concise terms to users, that might change things from a regulatory perspective. 

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

I wonder if Costco is being investigated because they only allow their own gift card or Visa cards, not Amex (anymore), MasterCard, or Discover. Isn't this the same thing? Costco has a contract with Visa and only Visa (Visa controls all cards distributed by banks and other financial institutions, they are all Visa cards). Isn't this payment system anti-competitive? This type of payment process happens all over the place so why would, in this case the Dutch, any country only go after Apple for providing a single payment system when other companies do the same thing? Oh, wait, because they want a cut of Apple's money, that's why.

It's not the same thing. 

If you don't like Costco rules, you can shop elsewhere. 

That option isn't open to iPhone users. 

Saying that consumers can choose an Android device isn't valid IMO because the situation we are touching on (in general, not the Dutch case per se) is not made clear to users prior to purchase.

Now, if it were made available in clear and concise terms to users, that might change things from a regulatory perspective. 

- You have to be dumber than a brick to not understand how the app stores work.
- Would you expect to be able to pay Walmart through Target’s payment system?
- Would you expect Walmart to whine about how Costco won’t let them sell items in their store, and use their own payment system?
- Are store brand products now anti-competitive, after decades of it being just fine? (You could argue that all stores originally had nothing but store brand — there were very few third party brands, historically.)
- Allowing competitors to undercut another company’s business model is anticompetitive… this is exactly the kind of thing that other companies use to gain leverage and dump subsidized products into a given market to weaken competition.
- Buying an Android as an alternative is perfectly valid. It’s the same market. No one buys a Ford or a Leica and expects to reuse all the purpose built items they bought on another car or camera (and that could very easily be enforced — but it’s not).

And that’s the point — just because you can enforce interoperability doesn’t mean you should. Some things can easily do that, and it’s in it’s design and market to do so. For other things, it breaks the nature and purpose of the design or function, rendering it useless and enforcing mediocrity.

btw - I’d also like to live in the house you built, but not pay rent or a mortgage, because other property owners subsidize their units with advertising. That seems fair, right? Also, I’m going to sublet and keep all the income.

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

I wonder if Costco is being investigated because they only allow their own gift card or Visa cards, not Amex (anymore), MasterCard, or Discover. Isn't this the same thing? Costco has a contract with Visa and only Visa (Visa controls all cards distributed by banks and other financial institutions, they are all Visa cards). Isn't this payment system anti-competitive? This type of payment process happens all over the place so why would, in this case the Dutch, any country only go after Apple for providing a single payment system when other companies do the same thing? Oh, wait, because they want a cut of Apple's money, that's why.

It's not the same thing. 

If you don't like Costco rules, you can shop elsewhere. 

That option isn't open to iPhone users. 

Saying that consumers can choose an Android device isn't valid IMO because the situation we are touching on (in general, not the Dutch case per se) is not made clear to users prior to purchase.

Now, if it were made available in clear and concise terms to users, that might change things from a regulatory perspective. 

And right there is where this issue falls apart. If you're shopping in Costco you have to do so by their rules, if you don't like it, go somewhere else and shop. So, it is the same, because if I like Costco's brand, I cannot go to another store and buy that brand, I'm stuck shopping at Costco and have to abide by their rules and whatever payment system they chose to use. So if they only accept a Costco card, you have to sign up for and pay with their card. Just as if you choose to buy an iPhone, you have to install apps via the method that iPhone provides, if you don't like it, you can return it and buy a different device.

The bigger question here is, can hardware OEM’s be forced into making devices they don’t want to make? The answer is, no. Apple is well within their right to disallow the installation of 3rd party software altogether. Just as they are to restrict how 3rd party software is installed on their devices. Or if they so chose to, allow installation of apps from anywhere.

Furthermore, most users don't care that they can only download from the AppStore. The only people who complain about it are the ones who know well beforehand that the iPhone restricts downloads from a single source.... and of course some developers, who also know how the AppStore works before they accept the developer agreement.