Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

One of the biggest hurdles in trying to take antitrust action against Apple, I suspect, will be in proving that App Store policies cause harm to consumers rather than developers. There seem to be HN-favored narratives of "iOS users would rise up against the walled garden if they only understood" and "iOS users are too stupid and sheeplike to understand and rise up," but there is a more prosaic narrative of "iOS users like having one place to go that offers hundreds of thousands applications that are, by the standards of just fifteen years ago, dirt cheap."

Epic is implicitly making the case that consumers are harmed by having to pay $9.99 instead of $7.99 for in-game tchotchkes, but even as someone who's grown pretty skeptical of Apple's approach to the App Store in recent years, that strikes me as a reach. They were manifestly not losing money under the existing pricing agreement, and their fight here sure seems to be "we don't want to share that much revenue with Apple" rather than something akin to Hey's "Apple's revenue share materially harms our business". In-app purchase policies are arguably where Apple's policies are at their worst, but I have serious doubts whether Epic Games is a great standard-bearer to line up behind in a fight for fair business practices.

Epic Games can argue that a cheaper price results in more demand, ie more profits for them even if the unit price is the same.

But I don’t think they need to argue that. The cornerstone of US antitrust law is cheaper prices for consumers. This example demonstrates that.

But the point of business is making money. Apple has no monopoly in smartphone market. There are many choices. And if the court will force them to lower prices - will it start forcing price policy on other non-monopoly companies?

While I'll partly concede that to you - it also is literally the case that Spotify couldn't drop to match Apple Music's prices exactly because or this 30% cut.

The monopoly is not in the smartphone market. It’s about the monopoly behavior within the applications marketplace.

Google can have the argument that you can install different stores in their OS (or even apps directly), and so you’re not locked into the Apps provided by their store. Apple can not make the same argument.

I subscribed to Spotify on their website for the same price as Apple Music, and their app works fine on my iPhone. Apple even distributes and delivers updates to the Spotify app on my iPhone for no cost to me or Spotify (well, Spotify does pay $99/a for the privilege).

It sucks to have to open amazon in a browser to buy kindle or audible books, but it’s great to not have to deal with multiple dodgy app stores, or sideloaded data harvesting malware. As a consumer I prefer these sets of trade offs for myself and my family’s pocket devices than the alternative. Why take that choice away?