It is more of an monopsony[1] than a monopoly. If you are looking to buy a smartphone there are still options. If you are looking to sell software for smart phones, Apple is by far the most lucrative platform and they have a lock on publishing software for iOS. It is very difficult in the US to survive as a software developer for Android only.
The anti-trust frameworks in the US are based largely on monopolies and there is little in the way of legal precedence for protecting sellers in a monopsony market. If Epic wins their legal battle, it will likely set precedence for later cases.
Google and Facebook are also largely in weird legal ground. They have more or less exclusive access to large networks of users which is hugely disruptive to the advertising market.
[1] A monopoly is a market where there is only one provider. A monopsony is a market where there is only one buyer.
Perhaps I should have said “anti-competitive”. As you note, it’s very difficult to survive as an app developer on other platforms, and that’s bad for users ultimately.
I would like to see the US crack down on anti-competitive behavior in general, but especially in cases where companies are deriving value by gate-keeping some large network. To this effect, I think Apple is a relatively minor problem compared to social media networks. Consumers have no meaningful choice (hopefully I don’t need to elaborate on why Facebook vs Twitter is a false choice) and it allows social media companies to get away with all kinds of awful behavior, but especially the ability to steer the course of democracy (by determining at scale who is exposed to which ideas and at what potency) and then selling that as a service to the highest bidder or even serving as an attack vector for other states to steer our democracy (or other democracies for that matter). A monopoly over the flow of speech is intolerable for a democracy, and at least in America where conservatives are concerned about censorship of conservative speech by Silicon Valley progressives and liberals are concerned about Russian manipulation, it seems like a naturally bipartisan concern.
Edit: genuinely wondering what downvoters are objecting to in particular? Do you not believe that social media companies have a monopoly over their own networks? Do you disagree that they can and do steer public opinion and thus public policy? Do you disagree that this is a bad outcome? Perhaps it’s a bad outcome but regulation is an ineffective solution (e.g., libertarianism)? Educate me.
The monopoly/monopsony distinction is pedantry. The important point is that consumers and developers suffer because one company controls access to the lion’s share of a market. That point can be criticized and debated, but litigating semantics makes for boring reading and anyway it’s off topic.
Expecting people to be in the general ballpark of the definition of a thing isn't pedantry. It's kind of hard to have any sort of meeting of the minds when people ignore even the basic premise of a term.
Most competition regulators disagree. 50% of a market is well above the threshold for both the US and EU to consider a company to be a monopoly. They usually treat the cut-off as around 20%.
The anti-trust frameworks in the US are based largely on monopolies and there is little in the way of legal precedence for protecting sellers in a monopsony market. If Epic wins their legal battle, it will likely set precedence for later cases.
Google and Facebook are also largely in weird legal ground. They have more or less exclusive access to large networks of users which is hugely disruptive to the advertising market.
[1] A monopoly is a market where there is only one provider. A monopsony is a market where there is only one buyer.