If cornering 80% of the market is so terrible, the EU should make it illegal to sell the Nth Android phone that pushes past 79%, and/or make it illegal for the customer to buy such a phone.
The absurdity of such a proposed law should make it obvious that Google is doing nothing wrong by selling popular devices with a certain operating system.
Consider other historical antitrust battles. It's often not about dominance in one niche, but leveraging that dominance into other areas and limiting innovation there.
By your assertion, you would be happy to have had IE tightly integrated into Windows since the early 00s and make it extremely difficult for typical users to install another browser. Competing browsers would also be at a technical disadvantage to IE since they don't control the underlying OS. After all, Windows is popular, why shouldn't they...
You make a very good point and I certainly don't think that IE being tightly coupled to the underlying OS would be good for browser competition. At the same time couldn't I argue that a company such as Apple having so much power over their suppliers due to their market position, and profitability, is also not good for overall competition?
It's certainly going to be difficult if not impossible for a new entrant in the smartphone world to out compete an incumbent like Apple when negotiating contracts with Foxconn.
As I said in my other comment in this thread, I'm having a hard time understanding why certain behaviors get labeled anticompetitive while other behaviors, that ultimately may be just as detrimental to competition, don't.
I admittedly don't have a very deep understanding of these issues and I am perfectly willing to admit I might be completely wrong but I would love to hear your and other readers' thoughts.
The absurdity of such a proposed law should make it obvious that Google is doing nothing wrong by selling popular devices with a certain operating system.