darelrex

NFC is just a standardized short-range wireless protocol for a mobile device to communicate with a point-of-sale terminal. There is nothing in the NFC standard that requires any particular mobile device to participate in any particular bank, credit card, digital wallet, third-party app, or whatever. Apple is just using NFC the way it wants to: Not long ago, iPhones didn't even have NFC hardware at all. Apple added NFC hardware to iPhone specifically to support Apple Pay and for no other reason. Does that create a positive obligation that Apple let other companies use it any way they want to, and does that logic apply also to the FaceID scanner, the camera, the microphone, the GPS chip, the Secure Enclave, etc.? Believe it or not, the EU's competition authorities have actually suggested that it does.

thrang said:

To those who say, "well, YOU don't have to use a third party app store, so what are you worried about?", you further miss the point. We share significant amounts of content between friends and family. So my contact information, shared photos, contents of mail and text messages, and more, reside on my wife's, kids, and friends phones (all iOS) There is a greater level of trust to do so given the intrinsic security of the shared ecosystem. So it "someone else" starts using unvetted apps from a third party app store which does a lot of harvesting, you are indirectly harmed even if you yourself do not use a third party store.

Totally agree. Also: What happens when most of your favorite apps (and good new apps) go third-party-store-only because they have to compete with everyone else who's dodging Apple's markup? What happens when your school/university/employer says, "you must obtain this app from a third-party store or sideloading; it's not available any other way." What happens is that all users have to use third-party stores and sideloading whether they like it or not.

Apple's current system just doesn't allow any of that. And it's been going great for fifteen years. Just like Target's been going great with a strictly curated selection of merchandise, Target-only payment registers, and Target's fat markup (bigger than Apple's, that's for sure). How many Target customers are clamoring for it to be all screwed up by antitrust regulators? The only people who would ever call for that are people who don't like Target, don't even shop there, and want to see it ruined for the people who do.

Hedware said:

Somehow everybody gets asked except for consumers. As an owner of Apple products,  I do not want my privacy and security compromised because some lazy developers want to have open skies. They should attempt to build some decent apps. 

Exactly. Are all those people who voluntarily choose to shop at Macy's being unwittingly "harmed," and the government needs to save them from that harm by outlawing the Macy's markup? (which, BTW, is much larger than Apple's)

Apple in its turn has sued Ericsson over what it describes as "standards-essential patents."

All patents contained in the 5G phone standard (or 4G before it, etc.) are standards-essential. Nobody is supposed to need permission to use them. Nobody is supposed to need to sign licensing agreements to use them. Nobody is supposed to be able to get product-sale injunctions against people who use them, even while wrangling over money in court.

The only valid dispute is how much do they have to pay. And that's supposed to be the exact same (per-device) amount that everyone else is paying for those same patent(s). If no such amount exists (because the patent holder isn't following the rules of the FRAND agreement), then the amount owed should be zero.

It's stunning that phone communication standards — without which you can't make a working phone at all, and your whole company could collapse if your most successful product is suddenly unavailable for purchase — can be used in court to try to extort any amount from any phone maker. Hopefully, Apple got a good deal in this settlement, based on the strength of its case against Ericsson and the actual content of the FRAND agreement Ericsson long-ago signed.