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Monopoly deal app store1/3/2023 ![]() ![]() He also discussed the other main prong of Epic's antitrust accusations against Apple: a related but separate alleged monopoly for Apple's in-app payments themselves. Evans said developers don't have enough incentive to create products for other platforms in a way that may break Apple's alleged monopoly. courts take up the reasoning is an open question, although Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers seemed frustrated with some of the specific definitions and implications that Evans said he hadn't studied.Įvans on Monday also suggested, in a vague discussion referring to confidential financial figures, that Apple is able to pull in profits "vastly higher" than similar groups of companies, as monopolies often are. That absence of serious competitors allows Apple to charge unreasonable fees or impose unfair terms on both app-makers and consumers.Īntitrust critics of big tech increasingly argue this point - that costs, behavioral nudges and the way data is guarded create lock-in across digital markets. Costs and competitorsĪccording to Evans, the lack of substitutions for the iOS version of Fortnite, even mobile competitor Android, implies Apple has monopoly power over the selling and supplying of apps to Apple users. "My opinion is Apple has monopoly power in the iOS app distribution market," he concluded. Evans said that according to his analysis, although Fortnite and lots of other iOS apps are also available on other platforms, consoles and systems, Apple is essentially a market unto itself for most players because they don't want to or can't switch. Users are locked in to one competitor, in a way that's giving Apple power to destroy consumption of the game. "More than 80% of the time was completely lost," Evans said.Įvans took the fact that players tended to only use one platform and rarely switched even when the game was removed to mean that for many consumers, there aren't really substitutions for Apple. Playing time did go up on other platforms, but only by about nine minutes per week, versus the 56 minutes it went down on iOS, and even those who switched over likely were already playing on multiple platforms to begin with. Users' reluctance to switch platforms suggests there's less competition for getting apps than it might appear.Įvans also found that, even after Apple pulled Fortnite from the App Store, less than 20% of playing time switched over to a console or a PC. Those switching costs include the price of a new system, the difficulty of moving data, the appeal of a device that fits in a pocket or the desire to stick with other apps on the phone. ![]() in part because of the cost of switching to another way of playing. ![]() He found that most users only played on one platform - iPhone, PC, Xbox, etc. How did he know? He studied anonymous data from Epic's Fortnite players themselves before and after the game was taken off Apple's App Store. Antitrust law instead relates to what a company does with that power.įirst, Evans explained, Apple monopolizes a market for getting apps to consumers. The first step for Evans was to answer the questions, "In what market is Apple an alleged monopoly?" and "How do we know?" Just being big, after all, isn't illegal. Evans, who is chairman of Global Economics Group, spent some time after Monday's discussion of Peely the Banana with another witness, trying to zero in on those ideas - though he had to use economic and research terminology like "substitution," "switching," "lock-in" and "aftermarket" to do it. ![]()
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