How Apple's Agency Model for Publishers Fails to Merit Collusion Charges

[EbookReader]

This same position Amazon held would later be used for Amazon to then charge $25 per book once they totally had the market cornered and the market matured. It is naive to think that was not the plan.

If Amazon buys book at $10 and sell for $25,

I'm sure thousands of online stores will undercut them. Buy for $10 and sell for $14.

Why buy at Amazon at $25 when you can buy it at $14 elsewhere.

Heck, maybe Apple could jump into the market, and undercut Amazon. (buy at $10 and sell for $20.......still $5 lower than Amazon).


also,

Amazon would be SUED by the DOJ and class action lawsuit. If it decided to raise ebook prices.



-------------------------

Let's look at it another way:

Assume Itunes has 99.9% market share for selling digital music.
It buys MP3 at $0.91 and instead of selling it at $1.29, it sells it at $1.82.

1) someone will jump in and undercut Itunes
2) DOJ will sue Itunes for abusing its 99.9% market power by raising prices.

That's what you're arguing will happen with Amazon.....

 

[bsolar]

The charges seem to say if they acted in concert to do this they are wrong. I am not sure if doing a bunch of legal things in some sort of concert would meet a violation of the law or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion

Some excerpts:

It [collusion] is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production.

Practices that suggest collusion include:

• Uniform prices
• A penalty for price discounts
• Advance notice of price changes
• Information exchange

Collusion is largely illegal in the United States, Canada and most of the EU due to competition/antitrust law

----------

You are a perfect example of the short-sightedness. All of this led to Amazon being removed as the only real force in e-books which would have and again might mean massive surcharges for years to come.

Microsoft came from nowhere in the console market, and gained market share with competitive pricing and a good product. The iPod did the same in the portable music player department. Don't get me started with the iPhone. These were all markets with a much higher barrier to entry than ebook sales, with very serious key players with a very well established customer base.

If you think Amazon could get away with raising prices the way you describe without a competitor coming and eating their market share you are delusional.

 

[cmwade77]

The problem that IS collusion is simply put:
If you sell on the Apple store, you cannot sell for less anywhere else.

The model of we take 30% is fine, if that's what the publisher's agree to in order to sell on Apple. But, let's say Amazon says, we'll only take 15%, the publisher should have the right to sell on Amazon for less, because they are taking a smaller percentage. Or perhaps another seller says we will pay you $5.00 per copy of your book, but we get to set the price and the publisher says $5.00 is a reasonable price and agrees. Then that seller has the right to set the price at whatever they want, even below the $5 to get people in the door on their service.

Bottom line is this is the way the free market is intended to work and Apple can't come in and say, if you want to sell with us, then you can't let anyone else sell for less.

 

[bergmef]

which basically mean booksellers can't discount some of their 30% even if they want to because of the "apple - the exact same retail price" clause.


Apple: $14.99 (keep 30%)
Nook: $14.99 (keep 30%)
Amazon: $14.99 (keep 30%)
GooglePlay: $14.99 (keep 30%)

is the same thing as

Apple: $14.99 (keep 30%) - can't discount even if the bookseller want to
Nook: $14.99 (keep 30%) - can't discount even if the bookseller want to
Amazon: $14.99 (keep 30%) - can't discount even if the bookseller want to
GooglePlay: $14.99 (keep 30%) - can't discount even if the bookseller want to

The language is different but the FINAL RESULT is the same. Which in effect eliminated price competition among bookstores.

Imagine if there is no price competition between all retailers for things like groceries, gas, tv, computer etc....

or digital music (aka Amazon MP3 / GooglePlay can't price lower than Itunes).

I guess we just interpret it in different ways. If amazon sells for a dollar, apple gets to sell for a dollar. If amazon sells for a penny, apple gets to sell for a penny.

And it didn't say that the others have to match apple.

I guess I agree to disagree. We'll see how it plays out in court.

 

[sha4000]

Lots of naive people who don't see Amazon's long-term plan. They intended to stranglehold the e-book market to fruition and then either jack prices up or force publishers to deeply discount their books to them so they can continue to sell them for the low price but still make money. Neither option is good for the long term benefit of books or book readers. People are being really short sighted here and I think this whole thing is insane.

----------



You are a perfect example of the short-sightedness. All of this led to Amazon being removed as the only real force in e-books which would have and again might mean massive surcharges for years to come.

People seemingly want to ignore this for some reason, and I am not sure why. Amazon had zero intentions of selling books below cost forever. Their practices were designed to prevent competition from the beginning. Ebooks simply never got big enough before Apple got into it for them to enact their plan to screw consumers badly.

Continue to play into Amazon's plans though...

----------



You are simply ignorant. Amazon was the ONLY real source of ebooks before Apple got involved. The publishers did not like what Amazon was doing but they had no choice.

This same position Amazon held would later be used for Amazon to then charge $25 per book once they totally had the market cornered and the market matured. It is naive to think that was not the plan.

So feel free to blame Apple for the prices going up but thank them from unleashing your binds as a pawn in Amazon's little game.

It is too easy to fool some people. You were simply tricked so easily.

You have good points to counter the arguments made by others on here and I can respect that but your arguments are not new and have been posted in all the other threads about this situation. What bothers me about your post like many others in here on both sides of the table is that you seem to think you are the only enlightened one and everyone that does not see things like you do are some how lacking in intelligence. IMO that makes you sound just as ignorant.

 

[blow45]

(blah...blah...)

It's very funny that you accuse others of naivety in not thinking amazon would eventually raise their prices to say $25 and you don't even get the basics of competition in that they would not be able to do this since competition would immediately undercut them....

After a point, when your arguments (or the semblance of them) have been repeatedly rebutted very successfully you should just give up and not embarrass yourself anymore.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Unless they can call Steve Jobs to the witness stand in a court, it is quite irrelevant what he said.

When I looked at my copy of "Steve Jobs" this morning, all the pages were blank!

 

[BaldiMac]

If you think Amazon could get away with raising prices the way you describe without a competitor coming and eating their market share you are delusional.

Except price isn't the only barrier in the ebook market. If Amazon continued to dominate with 90%+ share, Kindle would have an iPod like influence on the industry. And when you look at digital music, iTunes has continued to grow market share despite being undercut by Amazon on price for a number of years. And that's without DRM (something that Amazon could still take advantage of in the ebook market.)

 

[alhedges]

I love the way you guys claim the author of the article has no credibility and cannot say Apple is innocent, yet you guys know Apple is guilty.... Ha ha ha

It's called analysis and critical thinking. You should try it some time.

Any one who is halfway paying attention can tell that the article leaves out important issues and misses others. It's a horrible, badly reasoned article that sounds more like a press release than something released by a serious paper.

Apple may still be innocent; we haven't seen all of the evidence. But if Apple is innocent, it certainly won't be for the reasons set forth in the article.

 

[Rocketman]

So it'll be an interesting case with a negotiated settlement after many years then.

As for our economy. It's doing poorly and likely to get much worse before it gets better. We have record numbers leaving the country. Not good.

We have a government hell bent on keeping inflation down to next to nothing and the worldwide downturn has helped. With income falling they are now cutting costs by wholesale government cuts to balance the books.

If you do this to a business it's a downward spiral to death.

Today for the first time I think we need a change in leadership. We can certainly do much better.

It is difficult to find an economist with actual market experience, a resume that critics cannot disregard and also has a willingness to look beyond neo-Keynsian (Keynsian is 2 sided - government tax rate cuts and spending increases, neo-Keynsian is one-sided government spending increases, preferably with associated tax rate increases) [aka Tax and Spend] and look at policies and view the results not the intentions. But here is one who submitted sworn testimony to Congress so the solution to the problem is on the record. He submitted it to the Senate which is dominated by the very Democrats who will not vote a budget in because that would trigger reconciliation with the budget already passed by the House year after year since the President's first and only budget, October 2009, was passed with $866B fiscal stimulus. There was also a ~$400B annual deficit at the time. That preamble will inform the observation of facts and views this link presents:

http://www.currencywarsbook.com/201...g-committees-subcommittee-on-economic-policy/

I hope this information is helpful to real people reading this.

Rocketman

I attached the government figures for receipts, outlays and deficits monthly since Bush 43 I, including Bush 43 II, and Obama 44 I.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I don't care about who the author of the article is or how much credibility he has. I care about the arguments he uses to back up his opinion. So far the arguments fail to address the DoJ claims in their entirety, focusing on some aspects which alone can very well be legit. Even the Macrumors post now has an amendment stating that the author's arguments are incomplete.

Exactly, but apparently the only reason MR cited Martucci is because he publicly took issue with the unbalanced treatment MR is giving to this story. They cited him only to rebut his argument, not to air it. Admitting any incompleteness of coverage does not seem to be a motivation.

I'm sure the editors of MR feel that they are entitled to their own editorial policy -- which they are -- but applying editorial rules to everything they publish makes everything they publish an editorial. Perhaps the word "news" should come out of the masthead, and it be changed to "opinions and rumors you care about."

 

[Judas1]

You've *badly* misunderstood the meaning of a 'Most Favored Nation' clause. It doesn't require that your price be *lower* than anyone else's. It simply requires that no-one else's price be lower than *yours*. There's a significant difference between those two statements.

If I sell a product to Bob, or Sam (who don't have an MFN clause), and Wally (who does), I can price things as follows:

Bob: $10; Sam: $5; Wally: $5
Or
Bob: $5; Sam: $5; Wally: $5

Because no one has a lower price than Wally, who negotiated an MFN clause.

But if I tried the following pricing schemes, Wally would have me for breach of contract:

Bob: $5; Sam: 7; Wally: 10
Or
Bob: $10; Sam: $5; Wally: $10

because I've given someone a lower price than Wally, who negotiated an MFN clause in his contract.

How are there significant differences. Let me give you a math example. If A>=B, then B<=A is an equivalent statement. It doesn't matter if you state A first or B first. They mean the same thing.

edit: I found another math example. Agency model + Favored nation = price fixing.

 

[bsolar]

Except price isn't the only barrier in the ebook market. If Amazon continued to dominate with 90%+ share, Kindle would have an iPod like influence on the industry. And when you look at digital music, iTunes has continued to grow market share despite being undercut by Amazon on price for a number of years. And that's without DRM (something that Amazon could still take advantage of in the ebook market.)

I have no fear in a key player having huge market share as long as others are free to join the fray at any time and try to compete and earn their place.

If the top player stops being competitive it opens space for the underdogs, and raising prices the way you described would be basically suicide. You mention iPod and iTunes and fail to realize that the iPod with his "iPod-like influence" came from zero market share in a world dominated by Sony & friends. You fail to realize that there is nothing magic in the iPod which would save it from the same fate if Apple underestimates a newcomer and stops being competitive for too long.

Do the wrong thing as top player and you'll find yourself in trouble. Ask Sony and their Walkman about that. Or Nokia and their mobile phones. Or Microsoft and their Internet Explorer.

 

[alhedges]

Lots of naive people who don't see Amazon's long-term plan. They intended to stranglehold the e-book market to fruition and then either jack prices up or force publishers to deeply discount their books to them so they can continue to sell them for the low price but still make money. Neither option is good for the long term benefit of books or book readers. People are being really short sighted here and I think this whole thing is insane.

I call BS. In the real world, retailers never have this power and this never happens. For years people said that WM was going to do the same thing...but they never did. They *still* have low prices. Or look at Apple: they've had a virtual monopoly of digitally distributed music for years...but they haven't jacked up prices either.

It is almost the level of tinfoil hat land to argue that Amazon's bad prices are low because they will eventually lead to Amazon raising prices...so the solution is to raise prices now. That is just crazy.

Amazon developed its original 90% market share because it was the only company that provided both a competent e-reader *and* a comprehensive store to buy books for the e-reader. There were e-readers before, of course, but buying books for them was complicated because the selection was poor and even then you had to go to a bunch of different websites to look for books. Sony, the leading e-book reader retailer before Amazon, didn't even have a bookstore.

If Amazon's process sounds familiar, it's because it is basically the same thing that Apple did with iTunes and the iPod, and it gave Apple similar market dominance.

However, within a year of a real competitor entering the market (B&N), with their own reader and their own large store, Amazon's market share began to erode. After the Nook had been on the market for a year, Amazon's e-book share had dropped to below 70% (they estimated that they had 2/3 of the market). And this was before agency pricing came into effect. IOW, Amazon was never some unstoppable juggernaut; they were just the company that got to the e-book space with a good idea first. As soon as others took the same approach, Amazon's market share softened.

And what happened when the agency model went into effect? E-book prices were jacked up, sometimes by 50%, overnight. And a lot of smaller websites whose business model involved discounts and coupons went out of business.

This was *not good* for the consumer, and it's crazy to claim otherwise.

Amazon had zero intentions of selling books below cost forever. Their practices were designed to prevent competition from the beginning. Ebooks simply never got big enough before Apple got into it for them to enact their plan to screw consumers badly.

Why do you hate consumers? Why do you think that higher prices are good?

Amazon didn't sell many of its books below cost. Amazon sold *most* *current* *NY Times bestsellers* for $9.99. That's maybe 40 books out of more than a million e-books.

But - as I mentioned above, as soon as the agency model went into effect, publishers jacked up e-book prices. Some went from $9.99 to $14.99. Others went to $12.99. And you claim that *Amazon* is trying to screw the consumers?

And publishers, incidentally, made record profits last year, most of which they attribute to e-books. Who is trying to screw consumers?

Continue to play into Amazon's plans though...

Yeah, whatever.

You are simply ignorant. Amazon was the ONLY real source of ebooks before Apple got involved. The publishers did not like what Amazon was doing but they had no choice.

Umm, Barnes and Noble? Kobo?

Why bother making such a long post if you don't even understand the facts?

This same position Amazon held would later be used for Amazon to then charge $25 per book once they totally had the market cornered and the market matured. It is naive to think that was not the plan.

So feel free to blame Apple for the prices going up but thank them from unleashing your binds as a pawn in Amazon's little game.

It is too easy to fool some people. You were simply tricked so easily.

This is complete nonsense.

 

[Rocketman]

They cited him only to rebut his argument, not to air it. Admitting any incompleteness of coverage does not seem to be a motivation.

I think MacRumors is a news source. They posted a link to an original source and a wide range of members including you commented on it and provided additional insight and critical review. Every post is a monologue including the MacRumors article, this post and your post. Readers are themselves free to intake all views and form their own.

You for example tend to post your conclusions based on your own training and experience and only after less thoughtful posters annoy you, begin to post facts and claims supporting your posted conclusions.

As with any legal matter there are two (or more) sides. My concern is justice is less likely in an environment where one side has disproportionate power in the venue of decision, in this case the government.

If you were a Patriot as defined by the founders, you would independently view the claims and theories and laws, but would decisively bias against "hoping the government would win". The constitution tells me so.

Rocketman

 

[PracticalMac]

Are you for real? Have not we all suffered because of higher book prices?

We would equally suffer if we cannot find the books because the publishers do not want to print them or offer eBook versions.
Publishers rather NOT offer eBooks if the do not get what they feel is a good profit for their effort.

Read :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Source#E-book_services
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers#E-books


Simple economics, it costs time and money to produce a book.
The vast majority of people and companies will not bother making a book if they do not get something, mainly money, from it (a few exceptions).
If there is little to no profit, then books will not be written and published.

 

[mrgreen4242]

If anything is wrong here, it's Apple's insistence that publishers have to give Apple the lowest price.

That's the one area where all this does differ from apps. If Angry birds was $2 on the iPhone and $1 on Android, there's nothing Apple can do about that. They're trying to make that a rule with books, though.

The good news is, I honestly think they can (and should) drop that and it won't hurt them. Then books really will be treated like apps, which is how I think it should be. (And I think Apple will still do just fine in that world.)

I'm not 100% clear if the DOJ would agree with me at that point or if they're trying to go further. My opinion depends on that and I don't have a really clear understanding of their intentions right now.

Aboslutely agree with this, and want to add that if they do this they can continue a price fixing complaint against the publishers. If there's collusion between them to set an artificially high price for ebooks (which I think there is) they can penalize them for it and Apple's arrangement doesn't enter into the discussion (once the "most favored" status is removed).

 

[Rocketman]

I wonder if the MFN clause is associated with a wholesale price given Apple itself has a fixed margin. I don't know. I would want to pay the same wholesale price to publishers as they offer to their lowest pay outlet, given the massive sales volume, market access, and assuming all costs of storage, transactions, and bandwidth which are non-trivial.

Apple came to the publishers with a take it or leave it offer. The meetings they had were discussing a fixed offer and how it effects them and the pros and cons of saying yes. That's very different from either collusion or price fixing, even if DOJ finds some email one of the employees of one of the firms were confused and thinking they were price fixing.

Even if they find someone with "bad faith", the corporations themselves were constrained in behavior and outcome by the four corners of the take it or leave it offer.

Rocketman

 

[BaldiMac]

I have no fear in a key player having huge market share as long as others are free to join the fray at any time and try to compete and earn their place.

So you're okay with a company maintaining a 90% share despite higher prices as long as there are people fighting over the remaining 10%? Seems a bit of a concern to me.

If the top player stops being competitive it opens space for the underdogs, and raising prices the way you described would be basically suicide.

I didn't describe any way of raising prices. You are confusing me with a different poster.

My example demonstrated that in the comparable digital music market, the dominant device has lifted the market share in the digiital music despite higher digital music prices.

You mention iPod and iTunes and fail to realize that the iPod with his "iPod-like influence" came from zero market share in a world dominated by Sony & friends. You fail to realize that there is nothing magic in the iPod which would save it from the same fate if Apple underestimates a newcomer and stops being competitive for too long.

I didn't fail to realize that. It simply had nothing to do with my point. My analogy was about the digital music market, not the digital music player market.

 

[bsolar]

So you're okay with a company maintaining a 90% share despite higher prices as long as there are people fighting over the remaining 10%? Seems a bit of a concern to me.

No, I'm okay with a company maintaining a 90% share as long as other people can fight to win over that 90% share. If a company can mantain 90% share despite competition it means it deserves it, if it doesn't deserve it other competitors will eat it away. Granted, the DoJ needs to keep alert to avoid abuse of dominant position, but that's another story.

I didn't fail to realize that. It simply had nothing to do with my point. My analogy was about the digital music market, not the digital music player market.

There is nothing magical in the digital music market. Guys at Apple can be a little less competitive on price now thanks to the momentum they have and the added value of the ecosystem Apple built which has no equal from any competitor at the moment, but they need to keep being competitive with iTunes otherwise someone soon or later would challenge them and win.

 

[BaldiMac]

No, I'm okay with a company maintaining a 90% share as long as other people can fight to win over that 90% share. If a company can mantain 90% share despite competition it means it deserves it, if it doesn't deserve it other competitors will eat it away. Granted, the DoJ needs to keep alert to avoid abuse of dominant position, but that's another story.

I'm not sure we are discussing the same thing here.

There is nothing magical in the digital music market. Guys at Apple can be a little less competitive on price now thanks to the momentum they have and the added value of the ecosystem Apple built which has no equal from any competitor at the moment, but they need to keep being competitive with iTunes otherwise someone soon or later would challenge them and win.

Except that your point that I was responding to was that significantly higher prices will lead to a reduction in market share. I provided iTunes as a counterexample.

 

[marksman]

It is almost the level of tinfoil hat land to argue that Amazon's bad prices are low because they will eventually lead to Amazon raising prices...so the solution is to raise prices now. That is just crazy.

Yeah better to wear your butterfly costume and sprinkle fairydust around thinking Amazon is going to lose $5 on every book they sell for ever.

If Amazon's process sounds familiar, it's because it is basically the same thing that Apple did with iTunes and the iPod, and it gave Apple similar market dominance.

Apple has never been the only source for music. Amazon led the way and competitors never had more than a sliver of market share until Apple got into the game. Apple does have a dominant position but that was done against pre-existing competition, not by creating the market and then purposefully lowballing prices to keep others out. That is fine that amazon nailed the product, but to not see how giving away books does not negatively hurt the long term health of the book industry for both publishers and consumers, is again, naive.

However, within a year of a real competitor entering the market (B&N), with their own reader and their own large store, Amazon's market share began to erode. After the Nook had been on the market for a year, Amazon's e-book share had dropped to below 70% (they estimated that they had 2/3 of the market). And this was before agency pricing came into effect. IOW, Amazon was never some unstoppable juggernaut; they were just the company that got to the e-book space with a good idea first. As soon as others took the same approach, Amazon's market share softened.

I would love to see your support that Barnes and Nobles had 30% of the ebook market before Apple got involved. I would also add that at the time of all of this the ebook market was still extremely tiny. It is still relatively tiny, but it is the future. This is one of the reasons why Amazon has not done anything yet, and would go back to the pricing scheme. Except now it will not work because publishers don't have to let Amazon set the prices for books any more. With competition they can tell Amazon what they can sell their books for... Again you miss this important point. The publishers have always had the ability to tell Amazon to stop selling their books for $9.95. With no real competition, though, it was pointless as they would sell no books.

And what happened when the agency model went into effect? E-book prices were jacked up, sometimes by 50%, overnight. And a lot of smaller websites whose business model involved discounts and coupons went out of business.

You will have to explain that further. What are these websites and why did they go out of business? Where they selling books for less than Amazon?

This was *not good* for the consumer, and it's crazy to claim otherwise.

It is good for consumers who like books. For those who only care about buying one book today not so much. For people who intend on buying ebooks for years to come this is a horrible turn of events, potentially. Reality is Apple already broke the seal though. We will see how crazy they get when the publishers then try to legally set their retail minimums and they are again accused of anti-competitive behavior.

Why do you hate consumers? Why do you think that higher prices are good?

I don't hate consumers. I just apparently know a lot more about the retail business than you and how such practices as those being taken by Amazon are not good for the health of a struggling industry trying to move into a new era.

Amazon didn't sell many of its books below cost. Amazon sold *most* *current* *NY Times bestsellers* for $9.99. That's maybe 40 books out of more than a million e-books.

Which probably accounts for 60%+ of their sales.

But - as I mentioned above, as soon as the agency model went into effect, publishers jacked up e-book prices. Some went from $9.99 to $14.99. Others went to $12.99. And you claim that *Amazon* is trying to screw the consumers?

They didn't jack up their prices. Amazon did. Amazon makes more money off the Agency model, a lot more. Amazon agreed to it, and they sold the books for those prices. The wholesale price of the books did not go up with the agency model, it actually went down in some cases.

Again you are being horribly short-sighted if you think Amazon was selling books below cost as a favor to you.

And publishers, incidentally, made record profits last year, most of which they attribute to e-books. Who is trying to screw consumers?

Please post evidence of this. I looked up some articles on this and they don't say what you think they say.

Again, continue to bury your head in the sand and think Amazon is your best ebook friend. I am a fan of Amazon as well but I don't think they are doing me or the future of books any favors with their gameplan.

Why do you hate free enterprise and publishers setting the prices for their books? Apple sets the prices for all their retail products.

 

[sha4000]

There are many condescending tones floating around here. So what you have a better understanding on this issue or any other issue. The common consumer does not even care about who did what,when or where and I dont have any stats to back that up but i think its a pretty reasonable assumption to make. I asked this in one of the other threads" Do you really believe with the evidence so far submitted that any of them are truly innocent? Everyone likes to say "wait until all the facts are out" but that rarely happens unless your in the jury box or and have access to info that the general public does not have. Unless Apple and the publishers can refute with absolute certainty what has been said already IMO that ship is going down whether at trial or settlement.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I think MacRumors is a news source. They posted a link to an original source and a wide range of members including you commented on it and provided additional insight and critical review. Every post is a monologue including the MacRumors article, this post and your post. Readers are themselves free to intake all views and form their own.

You for example tend to post your conclusions based on your own training and experience and only after less thoughtful posters annoy you, begin to post facts and claims supporting your posted conclusions.

As with any legal matter there are two (or more) sides. My concern is justice is less likely in an environment where one side has disproportionate power in the venue of decision, in this case the government.

If you were a Patriot as defined by the founders, you would independently view the claims and theories and laws, but would decisively bias against "hoping the government would win". The constitution tells me so.

Rocketman

A remarkably vague yet misleading and insulting argument. It's refreshing to hear your definition of what it means to be a patriot. Or not. Mostly not. The accuracy and applicability to anything actually under discussion here being impossible to determine. As intended, I presume.

Take it how you will, but this site has the word "news" right in the masthead. The difference between "news" and "opinion" is clear to me, but perhaps less so to you. Hint: an outlet that represents itself as a news source does not post pure opinion pieces and consider that their propagandist approach is balanced by allowing readers to comment.

 

[macUser2007]

So you're okay with a company maintaining a 90% share despite higher prices as long as there are people fighting over the remaining 10%? Seems a bit of a concern to me....

Are you referring to Apple in the tablet market?

This scenario is totally fine, as long as it is an open market where others can jump in and compete. Particularly in the case of ebooks

If it's an open market, competition will take care of any attempts to manipulate prices.

But, if the market is manipulated by price floors, or by MFN clauses, or by any kind of price collusion, then it is only beneficial to consumers to have the government step in and ensure that the free market works.

And that's exactly what is happening to Apple.