Apple does not have a monopoly on Smart Phones or App Stores. They're able to as much as anyone to control how their platform is used - there's no law against maintaining a closed and curated platform and your product or platform is not considered a Market in by itself.
There's also no law against having a monopoly, only for abusing your monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage in a different one.
Yes there is. It's called anti-trust law and a large part is about pure market share.
It's also illegal to use your monopoly in a market to get advantages in that market. Most notably, you can't use your monopoly to keep your monopoly. (I.e. intel making a deal with dell where dell cannot use AMD processors)
Monopoly regulations are enforced inconsistently across time according to political whims. There’re going to be plenty of counter examples to go around.
Monopolies and oligopolies are inefficient. Whether legal or not they result in in detrimental outcomes.
No, it's still not illegal to have a Monopoly. The FTC can block mergers that can create them if they believe it will harm consumers, e.g. through higher prices caused by less competition, but they typically won't block them if they think consumers will benefit through operational efficiencies gained by consolidation.
Walmart tells a manufacturer they have to pay a special Walmart surcharge every time a sale is made, and that they can't raise their prices only at Walmart (or give discounts at other stores) to make up for the difference.
And, in addition, after the sale is made, if the product allows the customer to buy add-ons after they bring the product home, the customer is required to go back to Walmart to purchase that add-on, and another Walmart surcharge is assessed; the manufacturer isn't allowed to sell add-ons directly to the customer without Walmart acting as middleman.
iOS isn't considered to be a market so they don't have one to abuse. Unless the courts declare that iOS is a market then the App Store would be considered to have a monopoly on App Stores in iOS, but you can't have a monopoly on your own product/platform (then everyone would be a monopolist). A monopoly is measured against the overall market. If Android didn't have an App Store or it was the size of Windows App Store then iOS App Store could be considered a monopoly, but not at the fraction of the user base that iOS has now.
If so, McDonalds is abusing its power even more. They don’t even let me sell my burgers in their stores.
Similarly, it wouldn’t surprise me if music festivals or cinemas charge suppliers selling on their grounds more than 30% of revenues.
I know app stores feel different, but as far as I know, that legally still is a reasonably apt comparison. That may eventually change, but if so, someone will have to specify what exactly the difference is. I’m not sure that is as simple as “physical vs digital”.
App stores feel different because they are different. You seem to have an incorrect definition of what a market is
McDonalds is not a market, McDonalds is a vendor in a Market.
Apples has a created a market on is the platform by virtue of the App Store, a case can be made for Anti-Trust due to to this, but it would be a hard one.
Defining what is and is not a market is always one of the largest challenges for Anti-Trust, take for example the Merger of Sirus and XM, there was a debate over if Sat Radio was a market separate and independent of Traditional Radio, in the end Sirus / XM won and was able to establish that Sat Radio was not an independent market because consumer could easily switch between Sat Radio and Traditional Radio
Given the Lockin, and increasing Costs associated with Changing Mobile Platforms it becomes more of a question on if iOS and Andriod should be separate markets or be considered a single market. I can see cases for both
I am not familiar with the legal history you cite but it is intriguing. Are there other antitrust cases that hinged on whether or not two things were their own markets or part of a larger one?
It doesn't matter in this case because iOS isn't a Market and the iOS App Store doesn't have a monopoly on App Stores. They can appeal to the public about the unfairness of it all (which is likely what their open letter was designed for) but they don't have a legal case against Apple nor an inalienable right to be able to participate in their platform on their own terms.
There's also no law against having a monopoly, only for abusing your monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage in a different one.