Apple’s “monopsony” power, and the woman who named it
Amusingly, there are two sets of people arguing about why Apple is bad, and each have their own argument:<p>1. Android sells more, and offers more variety of mobile and wearable devices than Apple. And here’s the data to prove it.<p>2. Apple is a monopoly&#x2F;monopsony and should be forced to allow more user choice of apps, allow sideloading, lower their prices, lower their app store cut, &amp;c.<p>Which one is is?<p>Apple is like Tesla. They don’t sell more cars than anyone else. They don’t have a stranglehold over vendors. They sell more <i>luxury</i> cars than a bunch of other people. And while you see lots of Teslas on the road, you still see more F-150s.<p>Their market is insanely profitable, and for many developers, their little market is highly profitable. But how is it their fault that app developers don’t shun them for Android-only, or Windows (do they still make a phone OS?)<p>Apple make their own devices. They don’t license an OS and then use shenanigans to force vendors not to offer consumers a choice, like Microsoft did.<p>They make a desirable product, and offer developers a desirable market. But they don&#x27;t have enough of the market to do whatever they like.<p>They can’t charge $5,000 for a phone and succeed because of network effects. Android phones can call and text Apple phones.<p>They don’t tell developers that apps must be iOS-exclusive to be in the app store.<p>Apple’s current success is exactly what the free market is for. People may grumble about the price of a phone or the keyboards, or the app store cut, but those who pay it do so because the value is there, not because of arbitrary constraints.<p>They aren’t Facebook. Nobody has to buy an iPhone to keep in touch with all their friends who have iPhones.