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0 pointsbsder1y ago0 comments

The definition of monopoly has changed drastically over the course of time and will continue to do so.

Regardless of what you call it, any market vertical that you can define with less than 5 genuine competitors invariably winds up being anti-consumer and needs to get broken up.

Apple is the focus here, but Google is no better and neither is Microsoft. Search, messaging, email, video--all of these are easily definable market verticals.

All of these need to get broken up until we have at least a half-dozen competing companies in those spaces.

This isn't limited to tech. Grocery store chains, industrial suppliers, financial companies, etc. all need to get smacked with the same breakup stick--especially if we want not just to not only stomp out anti-consumer behavior but also to have genuine supply chain resilience.

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darklion1y ago

> All of these need to get broken up until we have at least a half-dozen competing companies in those spaces.

You seem to be forgetting, we had your “at least a half-dozen competing companies" situation in the past. It was called the late 2000s and the early 2010s. And the reason it disappeared is not the traditional “everybody merges until only two or three are left standing”, it’s because iOS and Android were so much better than the competition that every other phone manufacturer starved to death or switched to Android.

By the time a new generation of smartphones with sufficiently-equivalent OSes had arrived — in the form of webOS and Microsoft Phone — iOS and Android were so established the newcomers couldn’t successfully compete.

Even today, while there are only two major OSes, there are still numerous successfully competing manufacturers: Samsung, Google, Apple, OnePlus, BLU, Lenovo/Motorola, Huwaei, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, etc. They all make mobile phones, with varying levels of market share across the world.

bsderOP1y ago

> it’s because iOS and Android were so much better than the competition that every other phone manufacturer starved to death or switched to Android.

I would argue that it was because Apple and Google could cross-subsidize the market from their other buisnesses.

Google viewed the ISPs as an existential threat and saw both mobile and fiber as a way to disintermediate them. Apple saw phones as an existential threat to iPod which was a huge chunk of their revenue.

Google didn't release Android until 2008. As of 2009 Nokia still had 33% market share and even Samsung(13%) and RIM (15%) beat Apple (11%).

> iOS and Android were so established the newcomers couldn’t successfully compete.

That is practically the definition of monopoly, you know?

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