This is like in Amazon sold a fridge and said you can only shop at Whole Foods. Epic wants users to be able to shop at stores other than Whole Foods, not to be carried at that store without a markup
My wife is absolutely obsessed with getting the latest iPhone when her current device (Android) either breaks or otherwise stops being useful. Her reason? "It's the best phone". Why? "Because it's super expensive". Why? "I don't know everyone says it's the best phone."
It would surprise me if any conversation about why to buy an iPhone ever went deeper than that, 99.99999% of the time. The HN crowd is absolutely an exception to the typical buyer.
In what way? The same way most people think about what phone they're going to buy?
In no way have I indicated she isn't intelligent. She is. She just doesn't care to know that Apple uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon blah blah blah processor and investigate in depth their app store policies before buying one. And why should she? None of those things tell her "can I send pictures to my friends on Facebook? Can I check email? Will it work on my wifi?" And why should she wonder those things?
What might blow your mind to think about is that her position is the rational one. We can't all be experts in every decision we make. While we might be tempted to (incorrectly) think that more information will inform a better decision, that is not always true and it can lull us into false confidence to believe it is. We rely on "crowdsourcing" knowledge and recommendations (we are, after all, social creatures, and our success as a species is 99.99% predicated on that sole factor) and that is what we do in many many areas of our lives.
Sure, there are reasons people buy products with restrictions. But if there is harm to consumers, antitrust regulations can be used to prevent predatory business practices
Most iPhone purchases in usa today are not based on careful evaluation and comparison with other phones. Otherwise us iPhone sales would be in line with the rest of the world, who were introduced to smartphones with other devices.
Look at other markets to understand what a legacy free smartphone market share like like today.
Other markets are very price sensitive, there is no new iPhone choice below $100. Where people do have a choice, point stands, many choose iPhone and pay premium.
That's not true. Apple has had a budget model every year for several years now. Nobody outside the USA buys it in any volume. Why? Because it is irrationally priced based on that phone's capability.
The truth is, if you want the best phone on the market, in any single area (battery, camera, screen, apps, usability, design) or all of them, it is not an Iphone. The only reason USians cling to their Iphones is because they are familiar with it. They are stuck with SMS and Imessage. People are risk averse and would rather pay more for something they know.
You cited the stats yourself. Do you think Germans are more price sensitive than Americans? Search for "poorest state in USA", and Mississippi comes out as one of the poorest in terms of median household income. That number is $44,717 for 2018. Now search for "iphone market share by state" and you end up on this page[1]: For iOS, the most popular states were Connecticut at 73 percent of respondents, Missouri at 72 percent, and Mississippi at 71 percent. Median household income in Germany is $46,278. But Iphone share is 30%.
Are you saying that marginally richer Germans are more price sensitive than the inhabitants of Mississippi? To the extent of flipping the market share exactly opposite of 70-30?
The remedy in this scenario is to simply not buy Amazon fridges, not have the government step in and force Amazon to change its fridges. Legal intervention should not occur unless Amazon was the only fridge seller in the world.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style? We've had to ask you many times. The snark here is not cool, and you've crossed into personal attack and did it again in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313573. We ban accounts that do these things. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd appreciate it.
You've added a number of details to this hypothetical scenario that weren't actually in the original scenario I was replying to. Let me go ahead and agree with you that if two companies have colluded to fix prices, then regardless of how big they are the government should indeed intervene.
