If EU and UK thinks Visa and Master have a duopoly status and demands them to lower their ridiculous processing fees, they will do the same to Apple and Google. Visa and Master both cite there are plenty of competition such as cash, government payment system or what not. And how their 3% are used for consumer benefits like cash back and gift. But EU was having none of it.
I feel like every time Apple's anti-sideloading, anti-browser-(engine-)choice practices come up, there's a chorus of, 'Consumers have choice! They can go elsewhere!'.
Which is predicated around the one & only one other smartphone market actor not being controlling sinister exploiters.'It's ok that we're bad, because there are other good people.' 'If you want choice, you have it, just not here' is, in such a small pool, imo, not sufficient. The vise-like grip imo is engaged in deep anti-trust anticompetitive behaviors; there being a duopoloy rather than a monopoly is an uninteresting distinction to me, even if one of the duopoly still allows some freedom.
We have long passed the point at which it was obvious we needed an open smartphone alternative, but even after years of effort, none of them Pine64, Librem, etc.) are suitable for daily use even by us propellerheads, and completely hopeless for Grandma.
Just maybe instead of advocating vaccine-induced genocide, Bill Gates should try turning his hand to real philanthropy by funding a couple of open smartphone projects (no strings attached) to develop both open software and state-of-the-art open hardware for next-gen smartphones. Yeah, I know - dream on...
But seriously, this takes money - and a non-trivial amount of it. Who will step up to fund this? If no one does, we're locked in for another couple of decades at least...
