Games are silly and inessential. And there are a dozen markets to choose from. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, Humble, Itch, direct download, retro games, ...

Phones are essential. You can't get a job without one. It's impossible to stay connected or navigate without one. You can't even order food in a restaurant these days without your smartphone. Yet two companies control and tax the entirety of mobile computing.

Scratch that. Mobile computing *IS* computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.

And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.

2000's-era DOJ-litigated antitrust abuser Microsoft dreams that they had this much of a monopoly.

The Halloween papers sounded evil. Mobile computing monopolization is evil.

Here's what needs to be done:

1. Web installs. Both companies need to allow web native installs without scare walls or buried settings flags that need to be enabled. First class apps from the web, with no scaring users about it. We have all the technology to make this work safely: permissions, app scanning, signature blacklisting, etc.

2. Defaults. Both companies need to be prevented from pushing their apps as defaults. No more default browsers, default wallets, default app stores, default photo galleries, default search engine, etc.

3. Taxation and control. Apps cannot be taxed on any transactions. Users must not be forced to "sign in" with the monopoly provider's identity system. Apps must not be forced to use the monopoly payment rails. Apps must not be forced to be human reviewed or update to the latest UI changes / SDK on a whim.

Mobile apps and platforms must work like desktop software.

We need this freedom and flexibility for consumers, and we need competition to oxygenate the tech sector and reward innovation. Capitalism shouldn't be easy - it should be hard to keep your spot at the top. Resting on the laurels of easily defended moats for twenty years while reaping some of the most outsized benefits in the industry has created lethargy and held us back.

▲

zdragnar 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.

Windows phones had a very enthusiastic but too-tiny following. Blackberry lost the plot with terrible hardware and software for the app era (developing an app for the Storm was enough to convince me to never get one of their phones). Symbian's S60 was too little too late in the US. Ubuntu, Mozilla, and others all tried various flavors of Linux and web based phones to no success.

I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Google was forced to change how they handle third party app stores. iPhones will likely never be big enough for Apple to be forced to allow other stores in the US.

▲

echelon 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them.

Don't blame individual consumers. Bad things happen at a societal level all the time. Carbon emissions, etc. We're powerless to stop it without governmental intervention.

Your average consumer isn't educated on marketplace behaviors and doesn't understand how a lack of consumer choice leads to increased prices, inflexibility, taxation of smaller marketplace participants, less innovation, less freedom, etc. They simply can't understand the complexities of the case as deep familiarity isn't a part of their daily lives.

The large players that set these rules are squarely to blame.

> I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.

You can install whatever you want on a Microsoft PC.

▲

thewebguyd 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> We could have had other competitors, but nobody wanted them

People didn't even get a choice. Google bullied Windows Phone out of the market.

People won't switch to a platform without apps. Microsoft tried to fix that, made an HTML5 youtube app. Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice. MS even followed what Google told them to do, and still blocked the app.

Google saw great hardware, and an OS that was gaining media attention (Windows phone at the time had a lot of positive reviews, and the Nokia Lumnia phones were great, and better cameras than any Android at the time) and used their market power to kill it.

	▲	echelon 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Google threw a fit and blocked it, twice. Can we get retroactive regulatory enforcement for that? Sounds like Google needs to no longer have YouTube. They're wielding it like a blunt instrument to destroy trillions in market value.

▲

andsoitis 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Mobile computing IS computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know. And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.

Top smartphone brand global market share: Samsung (20%), Apple (17%), Xiaomi (14%), vivo (9%), OPPO (8%).

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smar...

▲

mhh__ 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I bet there are quite a few people out there who actually have a phone with a faster single thread perf than their laptop i.e. latest iPhone + a crappy windows laptop