Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple ⇥ stratechery.com

Ben Thompson:

To put it another way, Apple profits handsomely from having a monopoly on iOS: if you want the Apple software experience, you have no choice but to buy Apple hardware. That is perfectly legitimate. The company, though, is leveraging that monopoly into an adjacent market — the digital content market — and rent-seeking. Apple does nothing to increase the value of Netflix shows or Spotify music or Amazon books or any number of digital services from any number of app providers; they simply skim off 30% because they can.

This is the best piece I’ve read so far about this legal issue — not just for what he wrote about the issue itself, but for what it says about the services part of Apple’s business today.