Not only that, but the purchaser does not own the eBook she or he buys, they are merely leasing the rights to read it.
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Apple Claims 20% of U.S. E-Book Market, Double Previous Estimates
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Not only that, but the purchaser does not own the eBook she or he buys, they are merely leasing the rights to read it.
I'm pretty sure that nobody has ever spent billions of dollars on designing icons. Who did they hire to make the icons, an all-celebrity cast each given a supercomputer to design?
The differences actually lie within which party sees the value in keeping it. The 'new Deal' effectively created the conditions for the middle class, which then drove this country forward. Arguing for the end of social security is a 'let them eat cake' moment. But I digress...
The article says 'claims' like it's fiction... How can anyone tell? Apple doesn't release their sales figures the last I heard.
Yes, Apple profit margins are so low that they totally can't do it. Besides I hear that the price of their new headquarters went up significantly (much higher than what Amazon is paying for their new headquarters in Seattle) Government should let Apple and book publishers to fix the prices. These way all of them will be able to afford fancy headquarters.
Am I missing something? It was my understanding that Amazon bought ebooks at a significantly higher price paid to publishers then marked them down to $9.99 to drive sales to their website and the their new device the Kindle. That was a business decision made by a company. Publishing companies themselves couldn't compete with the artificially low $9.99 price that Amazon sold their books for. Apple came in and offered to sell ebooks on their new device called an iPad, under different terms. But in either case, the price of the ebook had already been significantly lower than what the publishers sold the same ebook for to begin with. Outside of the favored nation clause, which was dumb, but has been revoked, I don't see a case here. Consumers can choose to buy ebooks from the retailer they wish, can't they?
I don't understand. Why is Apple in legal trouble, alleged price collusion? I don't see how you can be anticompetitive when you have that small of a market share. Even Amazon, if they have around 60%, couldn't do it.
I'm afraid I don't understand this case. Wouldn't price fixing only be relevant if Apple had a monopoly on e-book sales? It's pretty clear that they don't - I can easily buy an e-book from Amazon or B&N, where it is actually likely to be cheaper.
Forgot about that. Kindle users can 'transfer' the books (don't know hot that works) and iBook users are not. Apple Capitalism...
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
It already caused Amazon to "have to raise prices" because part of the behind-the-scenes deal is that no one could have better pricing than Apple. So, at best, if Amazon or others wanted to be able to sell a publisher's ebook, they couldn't undercut Apple's new higher prices.
It's some ways it's sort of like a bizarro world Walmart, whereby a powerful company flexes it's muscles to maximize "new higher prices" rather than maximize consumer benefit of letting competition drive pricing down. Basically, Apple couldn't get it's desired margin by fighting Amazon toe-to-toe because Amazon's model would have them actually losing money on many Ebook prices. So Apple worked with the publishers to change the game so that the publishers could make more and Apple could get it's margin (and Amazon couldn't keep selling at the lower cost or even loss-leader pricing). How, by setting up a model where we consumers as a whole would just have to foot the bill.
Then why don't they go after something that we are forced to buy? Like fuel and food. This seems ridiculous. Was anyone even complaining about the price of ebooks? Ludicrous. If you think the price is high just get a kindle, there are other cheaper options. Things like taxes, transportation, food, and housing we are forced to buy with no cheaper alternative are the things that need to be looked at.... not freaking ebooks.. are you kidding me?
Was anyone complaining? Yes - a lot.
"just get a kindle?" - do you not understand what this trial is about?
You can be mad at the priority - but at the same time - it's akin to getting mad at Apple for assigning dozens of people to fix Apple maps instead of redesigning the Mac Pro. Just because one is being attended to doesn't mean the others aren't or that the same "team" would be attending to that matter.
I'm not saying ebooks is life or death - but it's still a legitimate issue.
Collusion and being anti-competive are two different matters.
Collusion and what % of marketshare you have aren't related either.
Figures. It's been a while since I have checked comparison prices. Bugger...
3001: The Final Odyssey Apple iBook: $8.99, Kindle: $6.83. Diff of $2.16
Same for 2061: Odyssey Three.
Inferno Apple iBook: $12.99, Kindle: $12.99 BUGGER! Same price!
Every other book I checked, including some much older ones, were the same price! Bugger, bugger, bugger...
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Or they could start with 5% because 1% that Apple is paying on most of their profits does seem a little low (at least compared to my tax rate)
If they're selling, who's buying?
My mother is a top selling author on Amazon - her books aren't touched on the iBooks Store. Clearly they serve different markets - I'd be interested in hearing which markets iBooks is dominating, because its not teen romance.
My mother is a top selling author on Amazon - her books aren't touched on the iBooks Store. Clearly they serve different markets - I'd be interested in hearing which markets iBooks is dominating, because its not teen romance.
I like low prices as much as the next guy, but what you need to realize about this case is that Apple's behavior (legal or not) disrupted a market where Amazon was taking a loss on every book sold to drown out competition, intending to monopolize the market and then charge whatever they damn well pleased once their dominance was permanently established. By forcing Amazon to make a profit, they actually save the DOJ from having to step in with an antitrust suit against them in a few years time.
But I don't want a Kindle. I want an iPad.
- I if I was going to buy a tablet at all
Who would buy an e-Book from the iBook store? You're limited to just your iDevices in terms of reading your content. And don't tell me it's because of cloud syncing. The Kindle application sycns all of my content with every device that I own.
Collusion is anti-competitive. It also doesn't work unless you have a high market share. Besides, I don't see how allowing publishers to name their own price is collusion, unless there is evidence of a secret meeting where they were fixing prices.
Amazon was already dominating the market and prices had not increased. You can "predict" what might have happened - but there's zero certainty.
There's a massive problem with your theory. It's not feasible to create a monopoly in any type of market. And there's not a single way to permanently establish a direct dominance in any type of market, either. Theory and actual practice are two very different things.
Yeah, I wouldn't ever buy an iBook. I got a free one once, and it was a pain in the butt.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I'm all for the Gov aggressively pursuing all abusers of capitalism in this kind of scenario where a few huge companies can essentially price fix anything desired by consumers. Make capitalism work so that many players have to compete. I don't care if it's ebooks, or cell service plans, or gasoline, or whatever. A fundamental benefit of capitalism unhindered by too few being too dominant is that many competitors must compete on better service and lower prices. When the big players conspire to break Capitalism's natural drive to price minimization, consumers are always the losers.
In this case, it's just Apple being a big corporation and functioning like other big corporations. Rather than fight toe-to-toe on price with a company like Amazon, they tried to change the game to pressure the competition to raise prices to a level that would enrich the publishers and give Apple it's desired margins. That's wrong- whether it's Apple or 1980 AT&T or Standard Oil etc. When prices are fixed artificially high, consumers always lose. We don't "win" by arguing that the price fixers are right... whether they are Apple or anyone else.
That said, I very much agree that Ebook pricing is freaking narrow as a target of all such opportunities for the Gov to pursue. Personally, I think the Gov should get after the cell service providers as you don't have 5 kiosks in every mall (sometimes the same cell provider with multiple kiosks/stores in one mall) if there isn't huge profits to prop all of that up (and why are the plan prices so closely aligned with each other?). Why don't they? Look up how much those kinds of companies contribute to campaigns. Then look up how much Apple contributes to campaigns. Companies like AT&T learned to play this game the hard way several decades ago. Apple is getting one lesson right now.
Are you saying that I, if I am going to enter a new market and have 0 market share, cannot collude?
You don't have to be the leader to collude.