No, your analogy isn't right. Or rather, using your analogy, no one is being prevented from competing with Apple either, all you need to do is build your own wildly successful gadget with AppStore. Easy!<p>No, a better analogy would be to look at how Google restricts use of their APIs.  I remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to geo-code a couple of hundred addresses of handicapped parking spaces in Paris for a handicapped friend.  Google's terms of service required me to pay money for this access, because a couple of hundred hits, run over a few minutes, was considered commercial use of their service.  I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way.  And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits.<p>Both companies are very restrictive in how you, as a developer, may use the services that they provide.  And they are both near-monopoly providers of those services. As others have pointed out, both are publicly traded companies that are there to make a profit, and both will put restrictions on developers that they feel are using their systems in ways that <i>they</i> have decided are inappropriate.