No, 'App Neutrality' Is Not A Thing

from the misdirection dept

Last month, BlackBerry CEO John Chen tried to kiss up to major wireless carriers on the issue of net neutrality with a truly bizarre missive that received ample mockery in the technology press. Basically, Chen tried to argue that we don't need tough neutrality rules -- but we really should consider rules that force app developers to make content for unpopular mobile platforms. Like oh, BlackBerry, which after endless missteps now controls just 2% of the smartphone market. This was, to hear Chen tell it, because when companies refuse to make apps for unpopular platforms they're violating something Chen called "app neutrality":

"Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level."

Of course, as we pointed out at the time, Netflix isn't discriminating against anybody. If BlackBerry wasn't currently a train wreck and had a big enough market share to justify their time, Netflix would surely develop an app for BlackBerry users as well. As most of you know, net neutrality is about protecting the Internet from the bad behavior of companies that have built massive last-mile broadband monopolies courtesy of regulatory capture. In contrast, developers aren't making apps for BlackBerry simply because people aren't using BlackBerry's products. And while Google and Apple do dominate the smartphone market, the primary reason is because they offer a good product. That's in contrast to say, AT&T or Comcast, which offer a crap product because they have a government-protected monopoly over the last mile and have no incentive to improve.

I have no idea from the bowels of which ISP think tank or telco meeting room this "app neutrality" talking point originated; Chen and BlackBerry's incoherent tirade dominates the search results for the term. But it's worth noting that Mark Cuban actually argued a very similar point two days earlier, but, fortunately for Cuban, the media was too busy mocking BlackBerry to notice. Here's a snippet of Cuban's insight on the issue of app neutrality:

"There are basically 2 doors that control the availability of apps to the vast majority of smart phones in this country. They are owned and controlled by 2 of the largest tech companies in the world, Apple and Google. If you want your app to reach any type of audience (yes there are other app platforms supporting phones on the margin, but they are tiny by comparison), you have to make Google and Apple happy."

Again, this ignores that Apple and Google have come to dominate the smartphone market because they make a kickass product. Not to say either of those companies doesn't engage in anti-competitive behavior, and I don't think anybody would argue Apple's app approval process isn't bizarre. But that has nothing to do with net neutrality, and Apple and Google are a far, far cry from government-pampered duopolists like AT&T and Comcast. Still, Cuban proceeds to insist that net neutrality rules need to ensure Apple and Google play nice too:

"The mobile app economy is far from open. It’s dominated by two companies. It is in the best interest of the entire mobile eco-system to address this duopoly while we are re-examining net neutrality. We should seriously consider requiring Apple to to allow and support 3rd party app stores and to require that Google continues to support and enable 3rd party stores and more importantly to integrate them into the Play Store, much as Amazon does with Marketplace integration."

Cuban is again showing he doesn't quite understand how the broadband industry works or what net neutrality actually is. Consumers actually do have a choice of what kind of smartphone to buy or what apps to install. While there are some smartphone freedom constraints (usually imposed by the aforementioned carriers, mind you), users still can buy a Windows phone, or a BlackBerry phone, or some offshoot hackable Android ROM that provides greater application freedom and allows them to install whatever unsigned applications they'd like. They can also access something called the Internet for even greater freedom. That's in contrast to a Comcast customer who, if they want decent broadband, usually doesn't have any other choice. The two discussions are nothing alike, and I don't think that's a particularly complicated point to understand.

Still, like "search neutrality" before it, somebody somewhere pretty clearly hopes that the idea of "app neutrality" will shift people's attention away from what the net neutrality conversation is actually about: highly-tactical telecom carrier abuse of an uncompetitive broadband market. Fred Campbell of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology (a policy group dedicated to "liberate the ingenuity and creative spirit of America’s high-tech entrepreneurs and enterprises through market-oriented government policies") also rushed to the "app neutrality" argument when the group recently suffered a small stroke over the FCC's Title II plans:

"Chairman Wheeler’s description of his plan in Wired is disingenuous. His proposal will not ‘ensure the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission.’ Some of the biggest gatekeepers on the mobile Internet today are using their power over mobile operating systems to deny access to application developers, yet these behemoths are exempted from the FCC proposal. The fact is, application developers will still have to ask someone for permission before they can access the mobile Internet.

The Chairman’s plan is also discriminatory. He is proposing to apply privacy limitations on Internet service providers through ‘Section 222′ while exempting Internet ‘edge’ companies whose fundamental business model is to profit from collecting and selling personal information about consumers. The Chairman’s discriminatory decision to exempt the Internet’s biggest data collectors from this privacy provision appears designed to protect the Administration’s political allies in Silicon Valley, not consumer privacy."

You see, Google, Apple and Netflix's domination of the smartphone and streaming video market is bad, even though consumers still actually have an organic market choice when it comes to those services. AT&T, Comcast and Verizon's stranglehold on the broadband market is to be ignored -- even praised -- because, uh, well, I'm not sure. You'd think those endlessly espousing the value of "free markets" would find the latter situation equally untenable, since it often involves companies literally writing state telecom law to further insulate government-protected duopolies from said market freedom. Unless of course it's not really about loving free markets or meaningful personal values at all, and it's really just about offering any old flimsy, inconsistent argument to help carriers protect the revenues received from uncompetitive (and certainly not free) markets?

Filed Under: app neutrality, fcc, fred campbell, john chen, mark cuban, mobile ecosystem, net neutrality, open internet