Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares
I have a question about monopolies and market abuses.<p>Apple released their phone in 2007, the App Store in 2008, and in-app payments in 2009. During that time their marketshare was fairly small, and it didn&#x27;t start to really grow until they expanded availability to the Verizon network in 2011.<p>Right at launch of the App Store, Apple announced its sales commission would be 30%. Then they extended that same fee to in-app purchases a year later. At the same time they set the rules that third-party app stores were not allowed, and that third-party payment processors could not be used.<p>I&#x27;m mentioning all of this history to make this point: Apple made these rules when they were not a monopoly by any definition. They released these products, with these rules, into a free market and let the market (both users and developers) decide which products to use and which products to develop for.<p>Now, obviously, between 2007 and 2021 the iPhone has been a wild success. Its platform has grown in users and developers every year.<p>So in terms of the framing of &quot;market abuse&quot;, at what point between the launch of these rules and now did Apple cross that threshold between free-market competitor who can legally control their own platform to monopolist abusing its power?<p>I&#x27;m asking this question not just to make a point, but because I think it will be instructive for future companies to understand where in the growth curve the rules they started with can potentially cross over into being &quot;abusive&quot;.