Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features – iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence – to our EU users this year.
The iPhone platform has competition against other platforms. The platform as a whole is competing with android for instance.
Within the android platform, google play competes with fdroid, Samsung galaxy store, etc.
Within the iPhone platform, the app store has no competition.
But what does that matter when the platform has plenty of competition? This is what doesn’t make sense to me. Google chose to allow other app stores. That’s a feature of the platform. Apple chose to not allow sideloading or other app stores, again, as a feature.
Who is forcing people to use Apple devices?
Why doesn’t this extend to other platforms like Nintendo or PlayStation whose stores are explicit features of the platforms?
Ok, so maybe some cars decide not to offer seatbelts as a feature. Oh wait, they can’t, because that’s dumb.
Not having a feature that helps consumers is not a feature. When Apple prevents people from repairing their phones, that’s not a feature. When they prevent consumers from loading their own apps on their own device that they bought, that’s not a feature! It’s comically anti-competitive and bad for everyone.
The anti-competitive behaviour implied in a walled-garden starts once that flagship product is bought.
No one is forcing people to use Apple devices. That’s not what this is about.
It’s about other services trying to reach potential customers that happen to be using an iPhone. Spotify has to go through the App Store if they want to reach any customers on the second largest mobile platform. And Apple themselves have a lot of advantages concerning integrating their own music streaming service into the OS while Spotify is limited by the rules Apple sets, including taking 30% of any subscription made through the App Store.