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.]