> Sure - but what we’re really talking about is Epic wanting to take part of the profit without doing the work to build the platform.

Apple did nothing to create Fortnite, but they want about a third of the revenue from Fortnite. Epic did not create the iOS platform, and they are not asking for any of Apple's profits from the iOS platform. So your characterization of who's wanting profit without doing the work seems completely backwards to me. Apple's demands here are essentially rent-seeking.

> There are reasons why people trust Apple’s platform, and integrated payments are one of them.

As far as I know, Epic did not prevent people from paying through Apple's integrated payment platform. They simply offered an alternative.

> My point is that Epic actually is a company that has the resources to compete directly if they wanted to.

> Apple just isn’t the leader in games, and it would be great if Epic leveraged its position to build a real alternative platform, rather than just attempting to force its way into being a middleman in Apple’s platform.

Your suggestion is that if somebody wants to sell things to users who happen to be on smartphones without paying into the duopoly's protection racket, they should simply develop their own hardware supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, phone operating system, mapping and GPS software, email software, ditto for every other piece of software that is table stakes for a phone — and do all of this to a level of quality sufficient to compete with companies whose primary businesses are doing these things — and then finally develop whatever it was they wanted to sell in the first place.

This is not a reasonable position, and even if Epic is in a position to do it (which I'm not sure if they are), most companies aren't, and it is not reasonable to demand every company develop its own phone.

It's also bad for users, because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.

It is much more reasonable to just not allow smartphones to be the 21st century equivalent of a company town where employees are paid in scrip.

> Your suggestion is that if somebody wants to sell things to users who happen to be on smartphones without paying into the duopoly's protection racket

Obviously not. It’s not a protection racket.

I’m suggesting that it would be better for consumers if we had more competition at the platform level - then we wouldn’t have a duopoly, and we would have more pressure for the platforms to compete an innovate.

You list a bunch of technologies that have already been developed and can be integrated. I said it would take a billion dollars, so we’re on the same page.

> because then they'd have to buy a phone for every app.

Don’t be silly. Popular apps are available on more than one platform.

Yes, there would be exclusives - games especially, but that is no different to how it is now.

For all your complaining, you seem to be arguing very hard that we should be stuck with the duopoly you claim to dislike.

We deserve better than forcing both users and developers alike to deal with a bunch of additional middlemen within the duopoly.

I'm not saying we should be stuck with the duopoly. I'm saying that we factually are stuck with the duopoly, and we're more likely to get results from regulating the duopoly than we would from pointing at random video game companies and demanding they make a better phone to break up the duopoly.

> we factually are stuck with the duopoly

We are only stuck if nobody thinks it’s worth creating an alternative. The ‘duopoly’ has only existed for around 5 years so far. It’s bizarre to consider regulating such a short lived phenomenon instead of encouraging new entrants, particularly when there are so many deep pocketed companies that want a piece of the market.

We’re not talking about a random video game company. We’re talking about Epic, a multi-billion dollar transnational enterprise that could easily afford to invest the time and money Apple and Google did to build their platforms.

Epic is vastly more profitable now than Apple was when they developed the iPhone. Let’s not deceive anyone that they are some small games company.

If you want to guarantee that we continue with the duopoly, the best way to do that is to take away the incentive for companies that could compete, to actually do so, by giving them a piece of the duopoly’s revenue stream.