avon b7

They have to try. That is clear, but Google is well out in front at the moment.

I went to a funeral yesterday up on the mountain. Google gave me directions for public transport right down to the unique identifier of the bus stop and the minutes to wait for the next bus. Updated in real time to reflect delays caused by traffic.

It is clear that none of the people criticising this proposal have even bothered to read the EU factsheet which can be clicked through on via the article.

Almost all questions raised here are answered in the fachsheet, along with something else that seems to have gone over many people's heads. This proposal is not limited to smartphones.

It is attempting to tackle a wider problem.

There is a lot to like and once read, most people should be able to get their heads around why we reached this point. 

AppleZulu said:

avon b7 said:

This is part of what the EU had to say:

"Today's decision concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions amount to unfair trading conditions, in breach of Article 102(a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU'). These anti-steering provisions are neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple's commercial interests in relation to the App Store on Apple's smart mobile devices and negatively affect the interests of iOS users, who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device.

Apple's conduct, which lasted for almost ten years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions because of the high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store.

... "

Apple makes no reference to its anti-competitive behaviour in its statement and instead tries to put the spotlight on Spotify, its European nature and music streaming.

That’s because it’s absurd for the company that holds more than half the market to accuse another company that has a much smaller market share of “anti-competitive behavior” in that market. It becomes doubly absurd when you consider that much of that market wouldn’t even exist without the mobile platform created by Apple and then copied by its competitors. 

When Spotify launched in 2006, streaming music was limited primarily to stationary, plugged-in computers. There were mp3 players and iPods that made downloaded music portable, but Apple had to invent the iPhone, push phone companies into broadband, and then introduce the App Store for Spotify to become relevant. Samsung, Google and others followed, expanding Spotify’s opportunities for riding the broadband mobile platform wave. 

Spotify then used that platform to disrupt the purchased digital music market, and Apple supplanted iTunes with Apple Music in response. 

As with Epic, Spotify just wants a free ride. That’s what this is all about. 

Honestly, when you add to this the fact that Spotify also notoriously pays artists significantly less for their content than Apple, they come off as pretty parasitic, when you think about it. 

Marketshare has little to do with anti-competitive behaviour or the fines. 

One of my old clients (plastics industry) received and invite to a meeting of the main industry players (worldwide players) in the field. I think the meeting took place in Germany. 

Once there it quickly became clear that the agenda was an attempt at price fixing. My client quickly pulled out, not wanting anything to do with it. 

The company proposing all this was from the US. 

That same company (probably seeing the risks) reported the meeting to the EU and my client got a multi million euro fine - just for being there. 

The US company escaped a fine as it was the whistleblower. Isn't that ironic!? 

The fine stood. However the client did not hold a dominant (or even near dominant position in the industry). 

Which part of anti-steering within the context of a multi billion dollar app store business was not anti-competitive? 

apple ][ said:

The EU has zero jurisdiction over the USA, and I reject all of their ridiculous anti-innovation, anti-freedom, anti-consumer, anti-tech and anti-business proposals.

They can go stuff their miserable ideas where the sun doesn't shine.

The notion that a bunch of EU corrupt bureaucrats who know nothing about tech and have never created anything useful in their entire lives shall decide standard charger rules for everybody to follow is something that all American companies should flat out reject and simply tell them all to go and take a hike.

A company should be free to decide which tech and which standards to implement in their own products and Apple has been doing just fine for many, many decades without any EU bureaucrats deciding how Apple should make their products.

I trust Apple infinitely more than the EU. I don't have many good things to say about the EU.

I use USB, I use USB-C, I use Lightning, hell, I still use Firewire on a few older devices I have.

This dumb EU idea will definitely stifle innovation. If they want to live like cavemen, then go right ahead, but leave the US out of it, because we will not abide by their rules.

The EU can get lost.

The whole issue was caused by the industry, not the EU. The industry was using chargers as a lock-in on each company's chargers.

It was the EU which had a large hand in putting a stop to that but chose to allow the industry to regulate itself rather than legislating.

It was the EU which also brought us RoHS and WEEE, this time through legislation.

Both directives have had a worldwide impact but are only applicable within the EU. Of course other nations and companies have had to adapt to these rules if they want to do business in the EU and many choose to apply them to their non-EU business. That's good for everyone.

Amazon pages in the EU for example often carry WEEE info.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201819410

We'll see where this EU review ends but Apple shipping millions of 5W chargers in the box in 2020, really should look into how many of them actually get used.

AppleExposed said:

avon b7 said:

AppleExposed said:

rogifan_new said:

mubaili said:

Apple must not talk itself into believing that it cannot gain more market share. It must act aggressively, speed up the cycle, and push more variety of devices, i.e., do what they have done to the iPad line up to the iPhone line up. 

The problem is price, plain and simple. In 2016 the flagship iPhone started at $649. One year later the flagship model was $999. Even the Xr which is supposed to be the more affordable model starts at $749, $100 more than the flagship from 2 years prior. It doesn’t matter if the tech inside the phone or the materials it’s made with are more advanced/expensive to manufacture. At the end of the day the average selling price of the iPhone has steadily been going up. And consumers are starting to say no thanks, I’ll keep what I’ve got it’s good enough.

With the X I think Apple was testing how much of a price increase the market would bear (and the higher ASP would allow them to show revenue growth even when sales were flat to down). I think they got their answer. I’d be surprised if there are any price cuts this year and I’ll bet the XS gets removed from the lineup. But I don’t think we’ll see any price increases or storage configurations that push up the price. And I’ll bet we see Apple aggressively pushing trade-ins again.

The problem with this statement is that the iPhone X sold really well.

This affirmation is actually questionable for various reasons.

Apple never revealed any numbers beyond saying it was the most popular iPhone. It's all relative if the less popular iPhones weren't far behind iPhone X but didn't of course reach 'most popular' status. So, I think Apple made that claim for two or maybe three quarters and for the last quarter they said nothing.

That ties in with some analysts reporting at the time that iPhone X sales had dropped off faster than any other new release before it.

It was retired in the 2018 refresh and the first quarter of that cycle Apple issued a profit warning.

While we will probably never know all of what happened, it is very reasonable to speculate that the iPhone pool of purchasers simply ran out of 'financial steam' and sales dropped as a result. 

Tim Cook said it sold well.

Your theories are irrelevant.

My theories are no more or no less relevant than yours.

Tim Cook saying it 'sold well'  doesn't say much. If you only release three phones a year (or only two, prior to the X) but ship over 200 million handsets, it likely that sold well could be applied to all of them.

What the OP was referencing was that overall, prices for new releases had gone up. As a result people bought those new releases in smaller numbers.

What I was referencing was an extension to that logic. That, at any given time, there are only so many people who can reach those high prices. Some of them probably bought the iPhone X and most of those left the group of potential buyers as a result. Others may have been able to afford one but didn't see enough value in the Xr, Xs lines so opted out.

It's possible that when the 2018 refresh occurred (with those prices) there were simply far fewer takers.

At first Apple upped the promotion of financing deals on top of the regular upgrade/trade in offers.

As they went 'all hands' just before Christmas, they went one step further and introduced new trade in deals with bigger discounts and put them on the front page of the Apple websites. Originally they were called 'limited time' promotions. The last time I checked, they were still on the front page.

That tells us a lot about expectations and sales even in the absence of official numbers.

And if you want to quote Tim Cook, remember it was him who said Apple had miscalculated.

IMO, they miscalculated on various aspects and price was just one of them

Leaving the UK market is what would be commercially unacceptable.

Making threats of this kind does Apple no favours, it simply makes them sound as if they think can pull strings, sway decisions and set 'punishments'. Could turn into a PR nightmare if it eventually gets spun negatively.

Extra territorial reach is in itself a double edged sword. The US has been putting 'sanctions' on countries and companies and expecting sovereign nations to fall into line on enforcing them. 

Sometimes things can swing in the other direction. If they lose the fight, the best thing they can do is take it to the last appeal and then pay up if they lose. 

I found a heavily redacted file of the case,(. pdf):

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Apple-iPhone-motion-for-class-cert.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi007HX44-EAxVQgP0HHT_kB2A4FBAWegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0XWOmus6tWTw53K-NTONpN

And this was part of that:

"First, Prof. McFadden investigated what app store commission rates Apple would have charged in a competitive but-for world (“BFW”). But for Apple’s anticompetitive conduct, there

anantksundaram said:

“Online security” in the US is such an oxymoron. 

We laugh —I do too — at the EU when it comes to tech, but I do wonder, how come we never hear about such regular breaches (on a similar scale) over there? 

(It’s honestly a serious question. Spare me the predictable hackneyed responses, please.)

Breaches happen of course and fines are issued. Some of them are huge, others tiny but the obligations are there and the authorities take complaints seriously, no matter how small. 

Here is a good summary on what is required:

https://www.upguard.com/blog/cybersecurity-regulations-in-the-european-union

And one small example:

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2024/polish-sa-administrative-fine-failure-notify-personal-data-breach_en

And a bigger one:

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-sa-fines-transavia-poor-personal-data-security_en

Some of the biggies under GDPR (not necessarily breaches) but underscores how bad Meta still is:

https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/

This doesn't look good for Apple on the face of it.

Apple has the last word on 'trust'?

I can't see that going down well in the EU. 

I suppose Epic will accuse Apple of discrimination. 

We'll see. 

glnf said:

mattinoz said:

So what's in a modem that is different / hard compared to the M1?

Seems an odd statement to just hang out there.

You are (also) dealing with analogue signal processing at incredibly high frequencies. Designing a microprocessor is stacking up Lego bricks, designing a G5 modem is wizardry and magic with thrown in quantum effects. So to speak.

Not to mention all the standards compliance, testing and certification processes. 

Then the finished product has to actually play well with the deployed carrier infrastructure out there where Qualcomm and Huawei etc will have a major advantage, as both of them are actively involved in making that hardware as well as moving it forward (5.5G, 6G...).

Of course, financially, there is no getting away from paying patent fees to both of them in the process.