That doesn't give them a right to own 100% of the activities built atop their devices. Not when these platforms capture every conceivable human action or transaction. They should have lost that privilege when their reach grew so broad and deep. (It is a privilege that the US allows them to conduct business, and that can be altered.)

If Apple put up a bubble around 40% of all Americans and you wanted to give these folks air to breathe, would you be content to pay Apple 30% or be forced to go through Apple's slow moderation and release control mechanisms? Keep in mind that they may shut off your ability to provide oxygen at any point in the future for any reason.

The correct model was Microsoft Windows. You pay to license it, but then you can execute anything you want on top of it. If you want to pay Microsoft to help with distribution, you're free to do so. Microsoft is still making bank.

What Apple has done is uniquely controlling and prohibitive. They've captured all computing-related economic activities for a large percentage of the population. You shouldn't be allowed to conduct business like that in the United States.

> The reason there isn't a third OS is because building a good OS and app ecosystem is hard. MS flunked, Blackberry flunked, to name a few heavyweights.

This is why consumer protections are even more important, not less. If a market by its very nature has a high barrier to entry and makes competition difficult, the so-called "free market" principles that drive potential competition tend to fall flat, and that's why we need regulation to help ensure consumers don't get squeezed.

> Companies winning with good consumer solutions to complex problems isn't arm-twisting in any sense of the word.

That seems to contradict your first paragraph. They're winning not because their solutions are so good, but because even getting a solution off the ground at all is really hard. And it's not hard because the problem itself is hard (from a hardware or software perspective), it's because it involves a lot of expensive, time-consuming business relationships as well as building network effects over time among your user-base.

I'd concede that MS flunked in part because they built a product people didn't really want, and RIM/Blackberry flunked because they failed to keep up with where the market was going. But if you look at some of the more recent failed/small players, like FirefoxOS, PostmarketOS, etc. -- they failed (or are destined to be a niche product) because they had/have little chance at building the required third-party relationships they need to bring table-stakes apps to their platforms. In part that's because they don't have the financial resources Google and Apple do.

Yes, but companies entrenching a monopoly position after winning with a good consumer solution is arm-twisting.

Not really. Palm had an excellent product. There were a lot of startups that had ideas that are still innovative to this day in that space.

They lost because there are very few entities with the capital and manpower that Apple or Google have. A modern successor to WebOS or FirefoxOS would be what I would want as a consumer nowadays.

And yes, when more and more interactions with society depend on a smartphone, the basic rules of capitalism don't really satisfy.

When the market becomes a duopoly then they will start falling under antitrust regulations.

Walmart is large, but they no where near represent a portion of the retail market that google/apple represents in the phone market.

Having the right to repair is just another aspect of _owning_ the device you have. Apple's app store policy restricts what you can do with your device in a similar manner.