It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years). Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work. It's not like anyone is suing Ford or Dodge for only making accessories that work on their own cars and trucks. It's not like anyone can legitimately complain that Ford is anticompetitive because they aren't making themselves compatible with Dodge oil filters.
If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.
Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers. The app developers can only get to iPhone users through the Apple App Store, so restricting access and charging high fees is anti-trust.
Apple uses their dominant position in the smartphone market to exert leverage over the smartwatch market and block other companies' access to a huge chunk of potential smartwatch buyers. Reduced addressable market->reduced potential returns->reduced investment->worse products for everyone.
This same pattern hurts Apple users as well because Apple can reduce their investment, increase prices, or both, without worrying about being beaten on quality or price.
> Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.
This statement would be true if iPhone had 0.1% or 99.9% marketshare and is on its own irrelevant to whether or not it should be regulated. The whole point of regulating companies with dominant market positions is that they have tools to force customers into sub-optimal outcomes regardless of whether or not the customer recognizes it beforehand.
> If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case. But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.
This ignores the dozens of Smartwatch companies that don't have a smartphone business to integrate with. In your view, what should Garmin have done if the major Android players blocked 3rd party feature parity from the beginning along with Apple? Would Garmin need to make their own smartphone and OS to compete for watch sales, or would their product just not exist? Would that be good or bad for the industry?
They also don't make the Apple Watch compatible with Android, so they are also giving up their own access to a huge chunk of potential buyers (70% of worldwide smartphone users are on Android). So maybe we're missing something.
> In your view, what should Garmin have done if the major Android players blocked 3rd party feature parity from the beginning along with Apple?
In your view, what would happen if only one smart phone manufacturer ever offered any watch integration API? Would that make all of the others (who don't offer an API) anti-competitive? Or would they just have a worse value proposition for their products?
I can't believe this is the hill I'm going to die on- I'm not really an Apple fanboy, and I don't like some of the things they do (like 30% App Store fees or core technology fees in Europe). But I really don't see how Apple not opening up access to their phone constitutes anti-competitive practice. Companies are not obligated to deliver privileged access to their products. It's not a right you have to build a product off of someone else's product. The fact that they have opened up access in some categories does not make it anti-competitive that they didn't open up access in all categories. So many products are closed off in so many categories, why are we complaining about this time?
If smartwatches were an essential part of everyday life for the majority of people on the planet (or in <insert legal jurisdiction here>) as smartphones are then I would want regulation mandating interoperability there as well. As it is they are a relatively niche product so if Apple wants to limit the watch to their phones then I'm fine with that as I don't see it being a very powerful market distortion in the other direction.
> In your view, what would happen if only one smart phone manufacturer ever offered any watch integration API? Would that make all of the others (who don't offer an API) anti-competitive?
Only if those others have significant market penetration such that their closed API has the effect of harming consumer choice considerably in the smartwatch market.
> Companies are not obligated to deliver privileged access to their products. It's not a right you have to build a product off of someone else's product.
If you mean in principle, then IMO a sane legal system should absolutely confer some limited right to, for instance, build and sell software and hardware that runs on or interfaces with Windows. If you mean in practice, then it is absolutely a subject of debate in both the EU under DMA and the US under antitrust law:
> Connected devices are a varied, large and commercially important group of products, including smartwatches, headphones and virtual reality headsets. Companies offering these products depend on effective interoperability with smartphones and their operating systems, such as iOS. The Commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and connectivity.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/20/doj-sues-apple-antitrust...
Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch market when used with their devices, because they provide core platform services as a gateway for these products to operate and communicate with end-users, but define rules and restrictions which don't apply for Apple smart watches themselves.
> Apple is its own market from the perspective of app developers.
Exactly. They create a market while giving themselves preferential treatment. They do the same with smart watches, therefore not ensuring a level playing field in that market.
> If Apple did something anticompetitive to keep Android options from being good, then you probably have a winnable legal case.
But isn't that's the case Pebble is making here?
There is actually a Wear OS iOS App from Google to connect Android Wear devices with iPhones, and beside the fact that it's not possible to connect any non-Apple Watch to the iPhone without manually installing a separate App, Google is not able to provide the same functionality as Apple Watch does even when incorporating such a companion app.
No, the case they are making is that Apple is making things worse for Apple users. They haven't done anything to effect the Android watch experience.
> They create a market
They didn't create a market in this case. They created a product, which is the Apple Watch.
> Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch market when used with their devices
Wrong- they act as a gatekeeper to developers, not to users. If the new Pebble's core product was their app, then all of this would indeed be anticompetitive behavior (see recent European court cases against Apple). But Pebble's product is their watch, and there is nothing saying that Pebble has the right to integrate into another company's product. Apple could choose to do this, but they don't, and that's okay. Consumers can consider these facts when they are buying a phone.
I think this is the biggest disagreement point between you and the other poster. Whether it constitutes a new market is up for debate, but one can definitely argue that hardware and software that interfaces with iOS devices can be considered a market in and of itself, considering that there are literal billions of iOS devices worldwide.
It would be one thing if iOS was a limited-scope, standalone product. But it's not - a large portion of its value comes from working in conjunction with other, non-Apple software (and to a certain extent, hardware).
Now, in this segment, it's undeniable that Apple has constructed a web of their own solutions over iOS, and consistently gives themselves preferential treatment to ensure that other products have limited, if any, functionality.
This is certainly legal right now, at least in the US. But I don't think it's right or that it serves the consumers' interests. It's very similar to manufacturers of all sorts of physical devices freaking out about third-party repairs, parts, modifications and so on. It even has all the same marketing points about how anything without the explicit megacorp blessing is automatically tainted and unsafe, regardless of what it is.
>> No, the case they are making is that Apple is making things worse for Apple users. They haven't done anything to effect the Android watch experience.
What? Pebble is making the case that Apple is making things worse for Pebble users on iOS devices than for Apple users on iOS devices. That's the case. Android Wear is in the same boat as Pebble here.
> They create a market
>> They didn't create a market in this case. They created a product, which is the Apple Watch.
They created a product to sell in the market they already created, because an iOS user is free to buy any competing watch he wants, but Apple sets the rules for those competitors while setting other rules for itself.
> Apple actually acts as a gatekeeper to the smart watch market when used with their devices
>> Wrong- they act as a gatekeeper to developers, not to users.
What's wrong? What users? Thanks for confirming what I wrote. You agree that Apple acts as a gatekeeper to developers, which means that they control access to the market these developers are trying to reach.
> If the new Pebble's core product was their app, then all of this would indeed be anticompetitive behavior
For a Smart watch, Apple requires that the core product of competitors must involve an App, and Apple is the gatekeeper for that App and thus also the gatekeeper of the competing watch-product.
Their own product requires no dedicated App and can offer features of iOS not accessible to competitors
You're conflating two different things here.
One is, are their oil filters compatible? That isn't a problem; they can be incompatible. They're often incompatible even with other vehicles from the same manufacturer. Larger engines need larger oil filters etc.
The other is, does the company prohibit compatibility? If a new company wants to make engines but not oil filters, so they make a car engine compatible with existing Ford oil filters, or someone wants to make oil filters for Fords even though they're not Ford, does Ford do anything to inhibit this? In general they do not, and if they did, that very much should be an antitrust violation.
Ford and Dodge have ranges of similar size engines with similar flow rates in their cars and trucks (treat Ram as if it were Dodge). They both specify the use of filters that follow industry standards like SAE/USCAR-36 and ISO 4548-12. The ONLY reason that you can't swap Ford/Dodge filters between engines with similar filtration requirements is because each company uses a different thread size and filter interface dimensions. Any company could adopt a common standard and simplify the choices at the auto parts store but none of them do, because they all want to exercise some amount of control. The funny part is, they all participate in creating industry standards and they make very little money off the sale of filters. They also make their specifications available to aftermarket filter manufacturers like Wix and Fram. There is no patent protection on a particular thread size or the diameter of a rubber gasket. There is NOTHING stopping Ford and Dodge from unifying the filtration interfaces in their similar sized V-8 truck engines. Why is this part brand specific? You can buy a range of tires that work with either brand as long as you get the right size and durability ratings. You can buy batteries that work with either brand. You can find a whole slew of parts that are standard and interchangeable across brands, but some parts aren't.
This is equivalent to saying, "these two watches both have Bluetooth, a microprocessor, and touch screen, the only reason one watch works with Apple and the other works with Google is because of the software." Apple could open up their software to allow both watches to work with iPhone. But they don't do it. Apple does allow Bluetooth headphones to work fine with iPhones even though they offer the Apple AirPods. So even in the phone market you have analogs to "certain parts can work interchangeably across brands, but these don't." In the automotive world nobody is complaining about anti-trust, so maybe we need to think about whether Apple's actions regarding their watches is actually anti-trust.
Which is maybe dumb, but it isn't a problem, because of this:
> They also make their specifications available to aftermarket filter manufacturers like Wix and Fram.
Which is the thing Apple isn't doing, and furthermore is doing the opposite and preventing full compatibility with third party watches even if they would reverse engineer the protocol used between the Apple Watch and iPhones. Which is what makes it an antitrust problem in that case but not the other.
Moreover, the argument you're making is that the automakers purposely cause their filters to be incompatible to limit competition. You're essentially arguing that it should be an antitrust violation in that case. Which is a weaker claim because competition in that space isn't being as clearly inhibited -- nobody is claiming that the incompatibility is impacting the quality of third party oil filters -- but if you made the case that it was then you would be condemning Ford rather than vindicating Apple.
No it's not; GP didn't even address this. Competition sucks, and that is Apple's (and Google's) fault.
> Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.
I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).
Certainly some people buy an iPhone because they also want to buy an Apple Watch (which I assume doesn't really work well or at all with Android), but I think that's a minority of purchasers. They by an iPhone because of the iPhone itself.
> It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years).
I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence. The first part of your sentence is irrelevant. While it does take work to standardize public APIs, it also takes work to lock things down and choose what subset of functions third parties are allowed to access. The fact of crippling third-party smartwatch access is anti-competitive behavior.
This is the same shit we went through in the 90s with Microsoft, but many people here are too young to remember what that was like. MS gave their own apps (Office, IE, etc.) access to private, undocumented Windows APIs that let them provide a better experience than similar third-party apps could provide. The US government and courts decided that was illegal. It should be illegal for Apple to do so as well. (And before you start quoting relative market share numbers between MS in the 90s and Apple now, I don't think that's relevant. You shouldn't need a monopoly in order to be restricted from anti-competitive behavior.)
> But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.
That's a naive explanation for complex social phenomena. Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. But it's not enough to be good, or even excellent in today's markets. You need incumbency, lock-in, social capital, and, yes... anti-competitive behavior.
And to be clear, Android manufacturers are not losing. In most places outside the US, Android is the dominant operating system.
But! This isn't about Android winning or losing. It's not about Android at all. It's about companies like Pebble and Garmin being hobbled in the iOS smartwatch market because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. Android is irrelevant to this.
Yes they did, when they said they were amazed that Apple dodged anti-trust lawsuits. I said that from the rest of their post it seemed like they acknowledged that competition existed, they just didn't want to use Android options. The legitimate anti-trust example they gave (LTT/Floatplane) is from an app developer perspective (not a smart phone and watch buyer), which is why I talked about that.
> I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).
I didn't say that people buy iPhones because other watch brands don't work well, I said that they buy iPhones knowing that the other watch brands didn't work, and it still doesn't deter them. But they had the information available when they made their choice.
> I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence.
No, I said it's not like they totally changed course from being welcoming to other brands to locking them out. They were always hostile to other smartwatch makers, but I acknowledged that the article mentions that they may have gotten more hostile in recent years. Acknowledging that their hostility may exist on a spectrum doesn't refute the point that they've always been hostile to other smartwatch brands. I love that in your next paragraph you include a parenthetical that could refute your own argument though- market share is absolutely relevant. Nobody is going to bother suing a small fry over anti-competitive behavior with 0.01% market share in a healthy competitive market- the market takes care of that issue on its own.
> Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. ... It's not about Android at all
This article is partly about Android since "Apple is being restrictive" is in comparison to features that the Android API offers. They are saying that they are going to make an Apple app for the Pebble but it is not going to be as good as the Android experience.
