As well as facing possible antitrust claims in the US, the European Union is now taking a look at Apple’s closed-shop practises – with EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes claiming makers “cannot just choose to deny interoperability with their product”.
The locked-down nature of Apple’s App Store was specifically mentioned by Kroes, who also said that “consumers need choice when it comes to software or hardware products”. And she doesn’t mean buy a DROID instead.
Apple ought to be rather concerned about the rampaging commissioner, as she has a track record in winning EU antitrust cases – Kroes helped the EU whack Intel for over a billion dollars in ’09. [Rethink Wireless]
Timmy Toucan
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 7:19 AMInteresting if true.
What about OS-specific interoperability issues?
What about Canon (et al) lenses only working on Canon (et al) cameras?
iTunes or Zune music only playing on one system?
DVD/Blu-Ray region-locking interoperability issues?
Nintendo, MS and Sony games requiring authority over games released for their consoles?
matt
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 9:53 AMthe difference is: determining whether lack of compatibility is an understandable side effect, or purposely done to be anti-competitive.
also:
consoles buying exclusives is anti-competitive.
the zune-itunes stuff you speak of is also unacceptable.
I don’t know wtf is up with dvd regions, all I know is even that has been ruled illegal in Aus.
the fact is, it is hard to tell.
but apple saying you can’t convert flash to go on the app store, you HAVE to code from scratch using their dev tools. is not acceptable. and I call BS on any excuse they may conjure along the lines of “stuff made specifically for the platform leads to better quality”, making the app store the Only way is bad enough, it would have to be handled well to not be anti-competitive. it hasn’t been.
more of a tricky grey area for me is winmo7 being c# only. a language only Microsoft really officially supports. are they doing it to make life easy for developers who want to make stuff for their phones (it does), to try and push c# as a standard in order to finally replace c++ and push development to a higher level language? all understandable goals? or are they simply doing it to make it really hard for anyone to port between Microsoft and competing companies, coupled with the easy level of entry for noobs, who will find it too much trouble to convert from c#, effectively buying MS ‘exclusives’ without spending a dime?
tough one. at least one thing you can’t accuse MS of is taking advantage of a monopoly in the market place…
(fyi, iphone promotes obj-c, android java, but all of these support c++ too, as does every other smart phone, except winmo7)
boc
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 1:42 PMWhile I understand what you’re trying to say, your camera argument is invalid.
Canon and Nikon camera bodies accept third party lenses without any major issue.
As for their lenses, they’re perfectly within their rights to make lenses for whichever camera they feel like.
If Canon suddenly banned all non-Canon lenses on their cameras then that would be anti-competitive and they’d get slapped for that.
olearymo
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 8:44 AMwow, a billion? So steve will camly whip a chequebook out of his jeans pocket, write out a cheque for 1.1 billion, and say ‘keep the change’.
They won’t even miss it.
matt
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 9:38 AMI believe you will find it’s a fine AND the order to STOP.
Sam
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 10:32 AMI can’t wait for the EU to be dismantled. How’s that recession going for you Europe? Need some antitrust $$ to help you out?
If I created a successful company like Intel, Microsoft or Apple the first thing I would tell them is “Hey f***ers, I made this software/hardware, it is my property and I’ll do whatever the f**k I want with it.”
Tim
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 11:14 AMHa! And there is the difference really between EU and US. One values companies at the expense of individuals, and one values individuals at the expense of companies. Know where I’d rather live!
Stefan
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 12:40 PMthis ^^
boc
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 1:48 PMYou want to make money in their market then you play by their rules. Otherwise they’re well within their rights to fine you, halt your operations, revoke licenses, dismantle your company and seize your assets and your intellectual property.
If you owned a successful company like that and actually said that then you would be fired or voted out from that company pretty quickly.