The analagous situation with convenience storea is: If any convenience store chain was able to prevent other convenience store chains from operating in a geographic area, they would have a monopoly in that area. Consumers in that market segment would have no other choice unless they were willing to sell their house and move.

In your example, a consumer can easily leave 7-11 and go to a near by store at a much, much, lower cost than selling a house.

On Android, to have choices beyond the Play Store, all I need to do is change some setting and instal a 3rd party store.

On iPhone, to have choices beyond the AppStore I might be able to run some much more complicated and dangerous software, but only when Apple is behind in the cat and mouse game with jailbreakers.

The root of the question here is one we have to answer as a society. How much should consumer choice cost (relative to the price of the good/service they are choosing). Maybe 5x is reasonable, but 500x is not.

When a company deliberately does everything they can to raise those costs and thoae costs are very high (such as with Apple), I think we should absolutely call those companies to account for anti-competive and monopolostic trade practices.

Because Apple influenced them. They copied Apple’s model because Apple had been getting away with it, and will likely have to comply with whatever new regulations might result from this.