Microsoft president Brad Smith: It's time Apple's App Store model was probed
Microsoft president and top lawyer Brad Smith has voiced support for an antitrust investigation into the app store model created by Apple and the iPhone.
Smith made the remarks at a Politico conference in the wake of the European Commission opening a probe into whether Apple's App Store rules for developers violate EU competition laws, especially with regards to rivals of Apple's own services, such as Spotify and Apple Music.....MORE
"I do believe the time has come, whether we're talking about Washington, DC, or Brussels, for a much more focused conversation about the nature of app stores, the rules that are being put in place, the prices and the tolls that are being extracted and whether there is really a justification in antitrust law for everything that has been created," Smith said.
As Bloomberg reported, Smith said app stores from Google and Apple "impose requirements that increasingly say there is only one way to get on to our platform and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created".
"In some cases they create a very high price per toll – in some cases 30% of your revenue has to go to the toll keeper."....
Related, from a 2015 post:
Old school rent extraction device
Even these guys didn't toll 30%.
"The standard toll for an average ship in 1241 was 8 denari (1 denarus equaled 0.68 grams of silver)"
