 Relevant markets and market power of mobile appsKohei Kawaguchi,
Toshifumi Kuroda and
Susumu Sato
Japan and the World Economy, 2023, vol. 67, issue C Abstract: Antitrust investigations in the mobile app economy often require a definition of the relevant market of mobile apps and the evaluation of their market power. However, existing antitrust tools face significant challenges due to the non-price nature of mobile apps with multiple revenue sources, two competition margins at the mobile OS and mobile app levels, and the switching costs involved in the choice of mobile OSs. In this paper, we provide a description of the mobile app economy, including its essential components, players, and characteristics, and identify the challenges currently observed in antitrust investigations. We propose a model for mobile app users and advertisers that can address these issues and suggest a method for defining the relevant market of mobile apps and evaluating their market power, which is adaptable to markets with zero-priced products or multiple revenue sources beyond mobile apps. Keywords: Market definition; Market power; Mobile apps; Digital platforms; Two-sided markets (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:japwor:v:67:y:2023:i:c:s092214252300035x DOI: 10.1016/j.japwor.2023.101209 Access Statistics for this article Japan and the World Economy is currently edited by Robert Dekle and Yasushi Hamao More articles in Japan and the World Economy from Elsevier |
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