Reed Albergotti for The Washington Post:
Developers have come to accept that, without warning, Apple can make their work obsolete by announcing a new app or feature that uses or incorporates their ideas. Some apps have simply buckled under the pressure, in some cases shutting down. They generally don’t sue Apple because of the difficulty and expense in fighting the tech giant—and the consequences they might face from being dependent on the platform.
The imbalance of power between Apple and the apps on its platform could turn into a rare chink in the company’s armor as regulators and lawmakers put the dominance of big technology companies under an antitrust microscope… That dynamic is at the center of another brewing antitrust storm around Amazon, which is being investigated in Europe for allegedly using data gathered from products sold in its store to figure out which ones to copy and sell under private-label brands like AmazonBasics.
MacDailyNews Take: As , “Change or die.”
Apple does not have a smartphone monopoly.
Worldwide smartphone OS market share, August 2019:
• Android: 76.23%
• iOS: 22.17%
If you do not like Apple’s App Store model, there are myriad iPhone and App Store derivatives from which to choose.
As for Amazon:
Amazon knows what sells well, so they know exactly which acquisitions to make. — MacDailyNews, April 12, 2018
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Apple doesn’t need the App Store to appropriate others’ ideas. The accepted term for this is “Sherlocking,” and that was way before any App Store existed.
If regulators want to go after Apple (and every other company) for this, fine. Good luck. But, it has nothing to do with the App Store.
Literally every retailer from WalMart to Amazon to your grocery chain has a “house” brand where they sell popular items super-cheap.
But WalMart and Amazon are bottom feeders that will and have run over third party supplier’s as a part of how they do business
Utility programs have always been elevated to OS level example Duet.
…which itself was a clone of Air Display, which had already been around for five years when Duet copied it.
I liked the part were the guy who wrote the first “flashlight app” is now a “venture capitalist”. Remember the only thing a flashlight app is either turning up the screen to full brightness or turning on the flash of the camera.
On the second day I had my first 3G phone, I photographed a white piece of paper so I could display it to see my front steps at night. 11 years later, I am most certainly NOT a venture capitalist.
Ps: what you really want to do is write a great app and have Apple BUY your company. If that woman’s cycle tracker was REALLY good, Apple could buy the company and include that with the calendar app. jus’ sayin’
There is lots of small issues with this article that affects my ability to take it seriously. Like the fact they “Sherlocked” a flashlight. Look, if your brilliant app idea is a couple of lines of code, it’s not a product, it’s a feature. the app design cost depends upon the types of mobile app design. there are two types of mobile design Native and custom
Who can compete with Apple )))