It's an interesting choice of comparisons, why not use Vera Wang evening gowns? I mean its just fabric right? Except both Vera (who designs lovely evening wear) and Apple aren't actually playing the same game.

A more apt comparison would be Windows based laptops. This is because a pre-requisite for this effect to occur is the ability to compete on price. Since everyone who has attempted to make compatible hardware that was cheaper than Apple but ran MacOS has been sued mercilessly into bankruptcy, using Apple in this case fails.

Theaters, like MS Windows laptop makers, have a cost they have to bear and they pay a tax for a key ingredient in their product to a third party (the studios, or Microsoft depending on which we're talking about.) The product the consumer buys is a combination of the part the supplier got from someone else, and the part they made themselves. Their margin of course being their revenue above their costs.

When, unlike in designer gowns or Apple equipment, there isn't a legal barrier to enter, multiple entities pop up to supply the demand. They compete on quality, feature sets, and price.

The less maneuvering room they have around feature sets, the more they compete on quality and price. And the less sensitive the bulk of the market is to quality, they are left competing on price. I'm sure this is really obvious so I won't belabor the point.

For me, that leaves the interesting challenge of finding ways to make quality a differentiator in a market with low barriers to entry. If you have any ideas on that I'd love to hear them, they would be the kind of things that let entrepreneurs break into and disrupt existing markets.

Saying Apple has a monopoly on Apple equipment is like saying Vera Wang has a monopoly on Vera Wang gowns. There's no legal barrier to competing with Apple to make general-purpose personal computers. Dell/HP/etc are choosing to compete on price, and licensing Windows lets them do that, just like outsourcing your fabric manufacturing to a third party in Cambodia or wherever lowers costs for a clothing designer.