On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hosting a hearing on mobile app store competition, featuring representatives from Apple and Google, as well as several app developers. The hearing is convened by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT), chair and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights.
This hearing comes on the heels of substantial interest from both Republicans and Democrats in app store competition policy. For Republicans, a major motivation is the ability of large tech firms to ban controversial apps like Parler. For Democrats, economic power is the central concern. For both, the key issue at stake is the perceived gatekeeper power these firms wield.
The U.S. smartphone market is divided about evenly between Android and iOS. However, these two operating systems have a fundamentally different business model and design architecture...
Click here to read the full article from Mason NSI in Medium.
