>If your best answer is "We are adding diversity to the marketplace", then you're probably doomed. If you aren't better in some way (faster, cheaper, better tech, etc...)
We have seen it over and over in tech though...some small time founder starts something and then a VC back startup eats their lunch and takes the market (of course rewriting history along the way to say they invented/disrupted the market).
The sad truth is the answer to why a customer will choose us over established competitor is because...VC capital/your money. We will use VC capital/your money to out spend/out market our competitor because they can only grow as fast as their revenue, whereas we can artificially grow using your VC money, even to the point we can subsidize the price of our widget which the established competitor can't, we will grow our market share, even if at a loss because at any time we can "flip the switch and its all profit."
I know I read articles about that (much like the right to repair articles with respect to CAT heavy machinery), was there any legal action against any of the printer companies you know about? If I recall the outcome correctly I believe the printer companies lost the fight, but I don't know/remember if that was voluntary or court ordered.
As it relates to printers/cartridges unlike my car manufacture/gas hypothetical or the app store, I could potentially see certain IP (from patents to trade dress) rights that may actually help the printer companies argument (but again I think they backed down anyway).
Who are the viable competitors? It is Apple and Google/Android right? Everything else is the equivalent of Bing competing with Google Search. Keep in mind another MS defense was there is Mac and MacOS, we even build a IE for MacOS, therefore, we can't be a monopoly.
>To look at the smartphone market and how far it’s come in the last 10 years
Maybe there is a thriving competition in the smartphone OS market I am unaware of, but I thought maybe in the last 10 years the market went from MS, Blackberry, Apple, Google/Android...to more a consolidated market and effectively Apple and Google/Android.
The political outcome is interesting, I haven't heard that before, what exactly are the politics involved with wanting Apple to allow a 3rd party app store?
>What you're saying is I don't want to wear a seatbelt when driving my car.
As others have said there may be more apt analogies...sticking with the car theme, it may be closer to a market where you buy a Ford and then you can only fill your Ford up with Ford gas from a Ford gas station.
That market doesn't exist for clear cut reasons, but if it did you can bet Ford and other car manufacturers would claim the same thing, that limiting Ford owners to using Ford gas is for their safety, if Ford owners started putting gas into their Ford from a 3rd party, there could be all kinds of harmful additives or other quality issues with the gas that will damage the Ford. Of course Ford won't mention on their tax to "Ford gas suppliers" (of 33%) for access to the Ford car market.
>If you go to any sites that provide these sorts of things they're typically "scummy". Lots of ads, lots of Javascript, lots of dark patterns to make you load more page views
Exactly why go to those sites when you can get the same experience without leaving Google? And its not like Google isn't serving the ads on both Google and those "scummy" websites anyway, and no one is going to out dark pattern Google.
We have seen it over and over in tech though...some small time founder starts something and then a VC back startup eats their lunch and takes the market (of course rewriting history along the way to say they invented/disrupted the market).
The sad truth is the answer to why a customer will choose us over established competitor is because...VC capital/your money. We will use VC capital/your money to out spend/out market our competitor because they can only grow as fast as their revenue, whereas we can artificially grow using your VC money, even to the point we can subsidize the price of our widget which the established competitor can't, we will grow our market share, even if at a loss because at any time we can "flip the switch and its all profit."