Korea is first in open platforms! Korea has rejected digital commerce monopolies and recognized open platforms as a right. This marks a major milestone in the 45-year history of personal computing. It began in Cupertino, but the forefront today is in Seoul.https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1432644358646415363 …
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Replying to @TimSweeneyEpic @cmuratori
Can someone please explain. If I take risks, invest money, hire people, and manage my business in such a way that it becomes one of the dominant platforms for app distribution, why am I not free to charge whatever fee I want to make things happen IN the platform that I built?
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Replying to @meglio @TimSweeneyEpic
I am happy to explain, but obviously Twitter is a tough platform for explaining. I would start with the basic underlying premise, which is that if you want South Korea to enforce Apple's intellectual property (which Apple needs to survive), it must obey South Korea law.
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Replying to @cmuratori @TimSweeneyEpic
@cmuratori, thanks! just thinking aloud, if the consumer still has the choice to use an entirely different platform, how does the Law manage to qualify it as tying and, even worse, classify it a monopoly? Or is my understanding of “monopoly” very limited?3 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Also, you said that Apple had hardware business separately from software. But don’t they sell the hardware that comes with software and all the infra that comes with it for developers? E.g. iOS and all the APIs to control the device?
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Replying to @meglio @TimSweeneyEpic
Not sure which part you are referring to here. All I was trying to point out was that Apple does not have a defense of the form, "we discount our hardware and make up the difference by charging 30% on third-party software", whereas Sony et al would have that defense.
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Sony can point to multiple times when they have sold consoles at break-even or at a loss, expecting to make back the loss and then profit off of their cut of third-party software. So the consumer "got something" for the overpriced software (eg., underpriced hardware).
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That is generally how the consumer welfare standard operates - if the anti-competitive practice could be said to be part of a larger scheme that could be argued to help consumers get better products for less cost overall, then the Rule of Reasons says it's OK (roughly).
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Apple really has nothing like that to point to. They make a ton of money on the hardware, then make a ton of money on the software, the consumer basically just gets overcharged. So they have to come up with some other argument as to why the consumer is somehow not harmed by this.
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The defense of "well you could instead buy a Google phone" is not really a defense, because it is not clear why the ability to buy a Google phone means a consumer is better off than if they could instead buy an iPhone _and_ have an open App Store.
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So, if pressed properly (FINGERS CROSSED EPIC LAWYERS) into it, Apple will have to explain why consumers are better off if, when they buy an already-overpriced iPhone, they are then better served by having to pay Apple 30% of all software purchases instead of an alternative.
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And Epic did a nice job here by clearly offering an alternative payment method that would be cheaper for the consumer. So the court literally has in front of them clear evidence that the consumer would benefit if Apple _didn't_ restrict competition on its hardware.
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And so that puts the onus on Apple to explain how, effectively, the consumer would be harmed, long-term, by allowing Epic to give them a better deal on services.
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