Slated
Newbie
That is a technical limitation, not a policy enforced to exclude competition from a monopoly, so no ... it is not a violation of antitrust law.
Apple's policies OTOH...
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Class action by Android users over Apple forced programmer exclusivity?
- Thread starter williamhereford
- Start date
That is a technical limitation, not a policy enforced to exclude competition from a monopoly, so no ... it is not a violation of antitrust law.
Apple's policies OTOH...
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
Meh, you got me there. Good show. But still doesn't make what Apple's doing illegal. And everyone here(almost) knows how I feel about Apple, so when I say something in their defense, it should be taken seriously.
Slated
Newbie
Well that's exactly what this Class Action lawsuit will decide.
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
What class action lawsuit?
All a class action lawsuit will decide is if Apple wants to pay them off or not, and which lawyers are better at legal chess.
Slated
Newbie
The one suggested by the OP.
And yes, the legal fraternity is just as exploitative as the corporate's, but that shouldn't stop us seeking remedial action against anticompetitive business practises.
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
And tell me, how is it anti-competitive to lock down your very own proprietary platform?
If you want to drive a BMW, they make you go to the dealer to get oil changes. Is that anti-competitive too?
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
If there's a class action suit, it's got to be on behalf of developers or publishers of developing tools, not the end user. For the end user to sue, they'd have to argue that they have the right to have a Tour De France app (or whatever app) on their platform and/or that they're being harmed in some way by not having that app. That's a very hard argument to make.
Slated
Newbie
That depends on exactly what this "locking down" entails.
As the owner of the repository which distributes iPhone software, it's entirely up to Apple what software they host, but ... it should not matter what IDE is used to create that software, since that has no bearing whatsoever (from Apple's perspective) on the quality or integrity of the resultant applications. The fact that they do demand developers only use their IDE, means cross-platform development is disadvantaged, and for no justifiable reason.
IOW Apple is excluding competition as a matter of policy, not technical limitations, and that is actionable under antitrust regulations, whether or not you personally happen to agree that such behaviour should be regulated. Obviously a sufficient number of people believe that sort of behaviour is unacceptable that antitrust regulations were enacted into law. I'm one of them.
If that's true, then yes, although personally I've never heard of that restriction before.
Excluding competition is anticompetitive by definition, and there are laws in most countries which prohibit that sort of unethical behaviour, which is just as well, because the alternative would be a rapid decent into gangsterism, given the morally bankrupt tendencies of most businesses.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
Assuming every thing you say here is gospel truth, that still doesn't show where the consumer can sue. I could see where developers of other IDE's might be able to sue, but I don't see a class action suit on behalf of consumers. And if you were to sue on behalf of non-iPhone users, that's a really broad category. Who do you include? Just smart phone users who don't use iPhones? Dumb phone users as well? People with no cellular phones? Only Android users? What about BB users? or WinMo users?
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
But since Apple can simply not choose to "stock" the app in their store, for any reason, it's not really illegal. Do I agree with it? Heck no.
And about the car thing, a lot of high end car manufacturers make it so a special "tool" is needed to perform an oil change, and most of the time they won't sell that "tool" to 3rd party mechanics.
Slated
Newbie
Sorry, I'm being lazy with my citations, although you only really seem to have one point of contention, which is that anticompetitive behaviour is illegal, correct? Or is it more fundamentally that excluding competition is anticompetitive? In either case, the answer is contained within Title 15 of the United States Code:
The European Union has similar regulations, e.g. Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union - PART THREE: UNION POLICIES AND INTERNAL ACTIONS - TITLE VII: COMMON RULES ON COMPETITION, TAXATION AND APPROXIMATION OF LAWS - Chapter 1: Rules on competition - Section 1: Rules applying to undertakings - Article 101 (ex Article 81 TEC):
So all that remains for a litigation to succeed, would be for the litigants to show that Apple's prohibition against non-Apple SDK development tools is a "restraint" or "limit" of those respective developers' trade to competing systems, e,g, Android.
Consumers themselves can't (or rather shouldn't, because it would be futile) raise antitrust actions, for the simple reason that they (consumers) are not competitors, and as such do not therefore qualify for remedial action (e.g. damages). However, they can raise objections with competition regulators, who may (depending on the volume of complaints) decide to investigate. As a member of the electorate, you have the right to complain to your government about anything you wish.
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
Way to the the legwork. Kudos.
Slated
Newbie
You assume the rights of a corporation supersede higher statutes, which they do not. Just because one owns a company, that does not provide a free license to do anything one wants with it. In particular, there are special conditions for companies which hold a dominant position in the market (monopoly), which forbids them from abusing that monopoly to exclude competition (see my reply to A.Nonymous for legal citations). If the particular motive and mechanism for Apple's exclusions can be proved to be deliberately and unjustifiably anticompetitive, then they are violating competition law.
WRT companies creating artificial technical barriers to competition, e.g. "special" tools to enable changing the oil in an engine, even that is anticompetitive, because (again) the motive is not genuine technical limitations, but is in fact a deception designed to make it seem that no competition can be offered.
Here's a loosely related article:
So to apply your previous query to the cited case, don't cellphone manufacturers have the right to lock down their proprietary technology any way they see fit (e.g. proprietary charger connectors which make after market solutions unnecessarily difficult, just so those manufacturers can monopolise sales of their own chargers)?
The European Commission says no.
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
They Europeans are also the ones who outlawed deploying anything but GSM as well. So they aren't really a good reference, now are they?
Slated
Newbie
On the contrary, that example actually supports my case, since the EU standardised on GSM specifically to improve competition through network interoperability. The alternative is disparate carriers operating incompatible networks, thus defeating the objective of buying (or unlocking) a "sim free" phone, unless that phone supports multiple standards (more expensive).
AFAICT the EU's motive was an honourable one, and the results are certainly not disadvantageous to consumers.
IOWA
Mr. Logic Pants
This is utterly incorrect. Despite your sugar coatings, EU outlawed competing technologies (superior ones at that) due to sheer arrogance. CDMA has a SIM variant known as RUIM, and it would have been just as easy to make it law they had to use RUIM. Where the arrogance comes in is they(the EU) felt they had designed the perfect wireless system, and needed no outside help.
(Ugh sometimes I hate tapatalk, whenever I type a less than sign it cuts off half my post. Ill post it later)
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
I disagree and this is where I admit my (biased) preference for a more free market way of doing things. In the US the economy is less regulated than it is in the EU. Companies can lock down their platforms and make them proprietary. Sometimes this pays off for the company. Other times it bites them in the ass. Sometimes this is good for consumers and sometimes it isn't. I still prefer this method to a more regulated economy where consumers don't get to choose which technology they want.
Bramsy
Android Expert
Slated
Newbie
That's a rather harsh way of describing something as innocuous as band reservation, which is, after all, no more than the FCC does. Note that many EC countries do in fact use CDMA for fixed networks, so the technology itself is not actually "outlawed" per se, only regulated according to availability on the spectrum.
But why should they? If one is going to standardise the networks, then one has to choose one of the available technologies, which according to your view is synonymous with "outlawing" the other. So your complaint seems to be not that a particular technology was chosen, but that in your opinion it was the wrong one. You attribute arrogance to something which was in all probability just a reasoned choice based on the overall pros and cons of each solution.
Now I'm not so naive as to believe that the EU's decision wasn't influenced by pressure brought to bear by the network operators, but then this is equally true in the US, or in any other industry, for that matter, so I think your characterisation of this situation is unfair and unsupported by any actual evidence.
As for which of the two technologies is superior, I have no idea, but more importantly I simply don't care, because the solution in place works without issue. One thing I can say for sure is that I would not have been happy with the hard-wired, SIMless handsets prevalent in North America, although, as you say, this can been rectified with the use of RUIM (or more recently, CSIM).
I can only speculate as to why the EU did not adopt RUIM over GSM. Perhaps it was too little too late. Perhaps there were issues (read: cost) with licensing the proprietary technology. Perhaps the regulators were Luddites with little comprehension of the technology, who were easily swayed by buzzwords and hype peddled by industry lobbyists (as is often the case in every industry).
But to automatically attribute the decision to some kind of arrogant "not invented here" attitude just makes it seem like you have an axe to grind, particularly as GSM (and TDMA) precedes RUIM (and CDMA). Indeed, the US has quite a history of "reinventing the wheel", starting with the English language itself, so I think you may have wrongly attributed the true source of the arrogance here, if any.
Ultimately what's important is that a standard is agreed upon and then implemented. My preference is for Open Standards (or more accurately Free Standards), but in the absence of that I'll accept any standard that people can actually agree on, for the sake of having the dependability of a standard at all.
Finally, here's a more balance view of GSM vs CDMA adoption.
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
I for one disagree. I prefer a SIMless handset myself, but that's a personal preference. The great thing about the US is that in the open market, you can make that choice for yourself. If you like a SIM, you can go to a carrier that offers one. If you don't like a SIM, you can choose a carrier that doesn't have them. You actually have the freedom to choose what you prefer.
Slated
Newbie
I'm greatly relieved the EU does in fact have such strong regulation of the market, without which we would be subjected to such things as Deep Packet Inspection intercepting our private communications, without any legal recourse.
Brussels to sue UK over Phorm failures ? The Register
But then the US is not entirely powerless to regulate corporate abuse either, as demonstrated by the FCC's intervention when Comcast abused traffic shaping to inhibit customers using BitTorrent, although a later court decision seems to have partially undermined their efforts.
The only dangers I have personally identified with government regulation of business, are those incepted by industry lobbyists seeking to implement Draconian restrictions on their customers, usually as a form of protectionism against failed and archaic business models (e.g. ACTA).
Slated
Newbie
You mean you have the "freedom" to choose to be hardware-locked into one particular network with one handset, or choose to throw away that handset to buy a SIM model supported by a limited number of operators?
How is that more free than the situation over here, where one can buy any handset, buy (or usually be given for free) any SIM for any network, then use that SIM with one's handset?
That's exactly what I did just recently. Without any research to determine which operators "officially" supported which handset, i.e. bundled contract deals with "branded" (locked) handsets, I decided I wanted a Samsung Galaxy S running on the "3" (Hutchinson) network. I bought the phone from one supplier, got the SIM from a "3" store, then married the two. I can now use my SIM from "3", or another from Orange, or (in the future) one from any network I want.
It doesn't get much more free than that.
Bramsy
Android Expert
question, dont need a paragraph response... is there are a big black market with stolen phones? is cell phone stealing common in Europe?
again don't need a long response with graphs and charts.
thank you, come again
A.Nonymous
Extreme Android User
But that stomps all over competition. For example, the iPhone here is exclusive to ATT. This is good for ATT and for Apple both (or at least it was at first) as it gave them ATT a ton of new subscribers for this new handset which ultimately worked out well for other carriers and subscribers as well.
When the iPhone first came out it was head and shoulders above anything else in the market. Nothing the competition had out there was even close. BB, WinMo and Palm were their only real competitors in the market. Most of their handsets were big, clunky and not all that user friendly for a technophobe. Suddenly, you had this iPhone on the market. It was sleek, sexy looking and ridiculously easy to use to boot. Your grandma could pick up an iPhone and figure out how to use it. Not mention there were all these apps out there you could install. Many of them were crap, but still, they were there in a centralized place and you didn't have that on any other phone.
Because of the exclusivity, ATT got all kinds of subscribers away from VZW, TMobile and the other smaller networks here in the States. Being a free market a company like VZW knew it had to basically compete or perish. There's no middle ground and no appealing to the feds that this is illegal (because here it's not). So what does VZW do? They beef up their 3g network, start rolling out 4G and start offering bigger and better smartphones. Before it was a given that the iPhone was the top smartphone and there were no competitors. Now there are several phones on the market that are serious competitors with the iPhone. This is good for consumers. If the iPhone had not been exclusive to ATT you may not have seen the rise of Android phones. You would simply have the iPhone available to anyone on any network and then you'd have a layer of mid-tier smartphones that weren't as good as the iPhone, but were competent phones.
When the iPhone first came out it was head and shoulders above anything else in the market. Nothing the competition had out there was even close. BB, WinMo and Palm were their only real competitors in the market. Most of their handsets were big, clunky and not all that user friendly for a technophobe. Suddenly, you had this iPhone on the market. It was sleek, sexy looking and ridiculously easy to use to boot. Your grandma could pick up an iPhone and figure out how to use it. Not mention there were all these apps out there you could install. Many of them were crap, but still, they were there in a centralized place and you didn't have that on any other phone.
Because of the exclusivity, ATT got all kinds of subscribers away from VZW, TMobile and the other smaller networks here in the States. Being a free market a company like VZW knew it had to basically compete or perish. There's no middle ground and no appealing to the feds that this is illegal (because here it's not). So what does VZW do? They beef up their 3g network, start rolling out 4G and start offering bigger and better smartphones. Before it was a given that the iPhone was the top smartphone and there were no competitors. Now there are several phones on the market that are serious competitors with the iPhone. This is good for consumers. If the iPhone had not been exclusive to ATT you may not have seen the rise of Android phones. You would simply have the iPhone available to anyone on any network and then you'd have a layer of mid-tier smartphones that weren't as good as the iPhone, but were competent phones.
Bramsy
Android Expert
slow down there partner. head and shoulders includes MMS and video recording. yes its touch screen was nice, but relax a tad or u might need ANOTHER change of shorts
also:
Gimped BlueTooth
Gimped Outlook support
No Cut and Paste
Crap camera
No voice dialing