https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-apple-inc-eur…
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union stepped up its antitrust case against Apple on Monday, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to technologies allowing contactless payment.
The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, has been investigating Apple since 2020. The commission’s preliminary view is that the firm is restricting competition by preventing mobile wallet app developers from accessing the necessary hardware and software on Apple devices.
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“Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system, iOS. And Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “By excluding others from the game, Apple has unfairly shielded its Apple Pay wallets from competition.”
Not much to add. We knew it would happen eventually. But I don’t see this as a big deal going forward unless they impose an exorbitant penalty.
“Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system, iOS. And Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “By excluding others from the game, Apple has unfairly shielded its Apple Pay wallets from competition.”
…I’m heading over to my local Whole Foods right now, with boxes of cookies I made from scraping the black oil that spits from the McDonald’s exhaust on my roof patio…(we live 7 flights above a Mickey D’s)…
…I plan on finding shelf space in the deserts aisle, and selling directly to the customers as they pass by…
…I really don’t care that Whole Foods built the joint, it’s there, and I have my cookies, so they have to let me sell them, regardless if they make the customers violently ill…
…otherwise, I’ll sue…
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deserts aisle
…or the desserts aisle, whichever one I find first…
…lol…
I take your point - it’s Apple’s house, so they get to set the rules - but Apple doesn’t have a long history of winning these big lawsuits, however meritless we think they might be. But I think this particular lawsuit is about the payment method used, not how big Apple’s take of the payment is. But I may be mistaken.
…I’m heading over to my local Whole Foods right now, with boxes of cookies I made from scraping the black oil that spits from the McDonald’s exhaust on my roof patio…(we live 7 flights above a Mickey D’s)…
…I plan on finding shelf space in the deserts aisle, and selling directly to the customers as they pass by…
…I really don’t care that Whole Foods built the joint, it’s there, and I have my cookies, so they have to let me sell them, regardless if they make the customers violently ill…
…otherwise, I’ll sue…
I’m going to call this out as a terrible metaphor. And that’s because I don’t believe thsi is on issue. Rather…
It’s that Apple - by refusing access to the NFC - is leveraging it’s control of the platform, the convenience that offers & high switching cost to strongly advantage it’s payment business over other offers.
Which - if done strongly enough - would be anti-competitive! In your metaphor there’s almost no barrier or cost for a consumer to walk out of the Whole Foods and into another supermarket / convenience store / farmer’s market etc. to buy / use your products. To switch mobile OSes to get the same payment convenience from another player - if that’s even possible - as a consumer would be potentially very expensive & as payment is important, that barrier could result in Apple gaining payment market share solely due to that control / cost.
(Note: Apple is already a convicted market manipulator & on a number of other occasions has adjusted behavior to avoid prosecution - iBooks in the EU, hiring policies in the US etc. As a result - along with GOOG & MSFT, AAPL need to be skeptically policed.)
2 Likes
While I was a bit harsh on the metaphor & its value (and in places my grammar was poor) I do believe we’ve reached an interesting space as AAPL, GOOG & MSFT investors / users. These are all huge, powerful and far reaching companies and build valuable platforms while competing with other players who conduct business via those platforms (often potentially unfairly).
And so those AAPL, GOOG & MSFT maintain an interesting tension between the platform as a safe, competitive & mostly fair space while needing to grow their own business.
An AAPL trying to grow the platform as an place of business results in different outcomes as an AAPL aggressively building its business (look at the actions of AAPL in the late 90s in terms of standards & standards access vs. AAPL of today). And a lot of those different outcomes can be better for the end user and sometimes for security. A modern example is wouldn’t it be great to be able to set your preferred app for various forms of data so I (for example) could use Google Maps instead of Apple Maps (the data generally speaking is better there) or use a different payment wallet (that perhaps could use crypto options also, while benefiting from a AAPL’s secured API) - which is already possible on Android & MacOS. Or be able to use a well checked fast ‘Gecko’ engine for web viewing (which could make the ecosystem more secure overall as long as it’s well validated).
As investors we should prefer the AAPL ‘aggressively growing its business’, whereas as users we should prefer a smaller ‘platform’ AAPL (as we could still load - or not remove - an AAPL option if we wished) that offers options.
As investors we should prefer the AAPL ‘aggressively growing its business’, whereas as users we should prefer a smaller ‘platform’ AAPL (as we could still load - or not remove - an AAPL option if we wished) that offers options.
As long as I see Apple’s business aligning with my interests as a user, currently, I’d just as soon see Apple aggressively growing its business. I lived through the days of Apple being a bit player with a dwindling share of the computer platform market and with nothing else to support its overall ecosystem. I’ve had my own complaints about Apple’s technology choices, but given a choice and having lived through one other major possibility, I prefer Apple being the big gorilla.
YMMV.
-awlabrador
4 Likes