Ask HN: How Are the Play Store and the AppStore Not Monopolies?

[thiht]

I keep reading horror stories about developers having their apps removed from these stores and I still fail to understand how they're not legally considered as monopolies largely abusing their dominant position...

I get that neither Android nor iOS are monopolies on the smartphone market, but why aren't Android and iOS themselves considered as markets of their own, on which the Play Store and the AppStore are monopolies?

Why don't they NEED to propose alternative stores on install as it was the case with browsers on Windows in the past?

[benologist]

The Play Store has alternatives, you can install alternative app stores on Android devices very easily and buy or configure devices that don't include Google services, install those services yourself etc.

https://f-droid.org/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sxts_snpl_1_0_d21...

[askafriend]

Apple's marketshare of global smartphone sales is around ~20%.

Would you still argue "monopoly"?

If you want access to Apple's customers (yes they are Apple's customers, not yours) then you have to play by Apple's rules.

This framing one of the arguments against monopoly characterization.

[m_ke → askafriend]

But they have most of the premium market. If you look at app revenues they're 2x android: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-n...

[foobarbazetc]

They are. It’s just that no one wants to piss off the store owner by saying so.

See also: Spotify.

The EU will eventually break up the App stores. It’s only a matter of time.