They have one competitor on which users are allowed to install their own market (see F-Droid.) [1]

[1] https://www.f-droid.org/

F-Droid itself relies upon Android's openness to allow it to be installed.

If you don't like Apple's walled garden then use Android.

And if you want to install whichever apps you want, AND not be spied on by your OS, there are basically no options.

Linageos is a possibility, but with the play services situation, running any mainstream app without phoning home to google is if not impossible, extremely difficult and filled with footguns.

Pine and Librem are exciting emerging possibilities but they have only been available for a very short time so it remains to be seen what will happen there.

PinePhone is available to order right now; and it's cheap as hell.

From what I heard there are some wrinkles to iron out before it's ready for the mass market, but I must admit I have not looked into it closely yet.

I bought one. My Blackberry Key2 is getting a little worn.

Join the weird fringe phone crew.

When people talk about Apple having a monopoly they're referring to Apple having complete control over the sale of iOS software. There is no one else in that market. Apple has 100% market share.

There are other people in the _mobile software_ market; if the argument for monopoly requires being as specific as _mobile software that operates on a specific manufacturer of a minority of all phones_ then perhaps it's not a monopoly at all.

Correct. The relevant terms are "horizontal monopoly" and "vertical monopoly."

A horizontal monopoly is if one company made all the cars.

A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads.

Apple is a vertical monopoly across its hardware, the software that runs on that hardware (they don't own the software, but they own the distribution channel), and some of the suppliers that manufacture components for the hardware.

> A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads.

That's not a good analogy. It's more like if you bought X's car model and X had a policy that you could only buy official, certified parts from certified dealers through which they get a cut. (App Store)

You can go for after market parts but if you break the car it's on you. ("Jailbreaking" AKA flashing your device)

Sorry but a market consisting of a single manufacturer's own product is generally not considered a valid antitrust market for legal purposes. You can't simply declare an arbitrarily narrow market like this because every manufacturer would then have a monopoly over its own products.

iOS is not a market, it’s a product.

This is like saying Uber has a monopoly on all of their own assets.

Wrong terminology.

you don't need to have a literal monopoly to engage in illegal anticompetitive behaviour, nor is having a monopoly even illegal. Apple has monopoly-like control over the mobile app market - if you don't make an iPhone app, your product is dead in the water. and apple is using that power to crush any competition to their own in-app payment solution.