Apple exploits this convenience by allowing the one-click purchase option only for their own payment system. Second, consumers are locked-in because of their convenience or “laziness”. To have competition between app stores, consumers would need to purchase another phone, which is costly. There cannot be competition between app stores when consumers can only choose the one app store that is tied to the phone. First, consumers are locked-in because they incur the monetary investment costs of having all choices. Instead of being competitive, Apple and Google create local monopolies because consumers are locked-in by monetary costs and by convenience. The ruling finds that there is competition between Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, which fails to acknowledge the type of economic competition in the market. The widely received Epic-Apple court decision in the US illustrates why regulation in digital markets is so complex and difficult. Ever since the EU drafted the Digital Markets Act to regulate market power in the digital markets, they faced strong protests. The market power of big tech firms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (the GAFAM) has long been a thorn in the eyes of the European Commission (EC).
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