I think it's a little bit better than that. There was a theory in operation: regulation which prevents sprawling monopolies will produce good results for society.

Of course, if you shook the historical dice differently, there would be different results. From that point of view it's all contingent, and you can't re-run the historical experiment, and so whatever conclusions you draw must be a Just So story.

But, that theory was in operation. There were regulations which prevented sprawling monopolies, and large (but not sprawling monopolistic) companies did produce a lot of good things for society. No one knew what they would be ahead of time - that's all contingent, after all - but regulators regulated with the expectation that their regulations would produce good effects.

Now we've de-regulated, and the people doing the de-regulation theorize that (predictably) sprawling monopolistic companies will produce more good for society than large (but not sprawling monopolistic) regulated companies did.

So... Did / do they? It's fair enough to argue either way. It's fair enough to argue about which regulations are effective and which are not. It's not fair enough to throw up our hands and say "we can't actually know what's going to happen, so there's no point discussing it."

Because there are theories of economics and governance in play, and they matter, and they need to be appraised.

in this case the market is already captured anyway, though. Even microsoft couldn't pierce it.

> The reality is that nothing prevents a new entrant from gaining marketshare

Nothing except banking apps, messaging apps and government apps...

You either support the only semi open standard of apps being Android or your phone cannot succeed outside of some developer tool.

> You either support the only semi open standard of apps being Android or your phone cannot succeed outside of some developer tool.

(1) iPhone and Android had exactly the same problem when they launched. (2) Web apps are a thing. (3) This problem would still exist if iOS didn't exist.

Again, in 2006 "smartphone" meant Nokia, Blackberry, and Palm. There's simply no such thing as a "captured" market when it comes to consumer goods.

> (1) iPhone and Android had exactly the same problem when they launched.

Sure, competitors could have started in 2009, too bad it's 2024 though now.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, there's no competitor in the past 10 years despite a big revenue potential, that's the reason.

> (2) Web apps are a thing.

They aren't good enough, and if they were don't worry every company would try to avoid paying the high store tax. (Hence why it's not going to happen)

> (3) This problem would still exist if iOS didn't exist.

Yes, that's why we need open standards to lower the barrier of competition.

> Sure, competitors could have started in 2009, too bad it's 2024 though now.

You may be missing the point, which is that today's Apple and Google are as "permanently" entrenched as Nokia, Blackberry, and Palm were back in the day. That is to say, not at all.

> Yes, that's why we need open standards to lower the barrier of competition.

Many open-source alternatives to iOS and Android have tried and failed to compete. For better or worse, this doesn't appear to matter to mainstream buyers.

You're going in circles, we don't need to speculate, we know that no competitor can emerge because they don't despite a huge revenue potential in this sector.

The proof is in the pudding as I said anyways, I'll believe there's competition in the mobile space when I'll see it. For now it all looks like it's impossible due to blockers like the apps and others.

And yeah maybe smartphones will become obsolete but I'm not going to count on it.

Exactly. But if we suddenly transition to a "recompile to webassembly and ship it as web app" world I assure you $99 ($0 profit) phones will suffice for 90%+ of users.

It will take a very long time but that will be the inevitable result.