Yahoo is planning on running Napster and Real out of the music biz with artificially low prices. Once plan A is successful, plan B will be to up the prices to similar levels to Napster or perhaps even higher. All the while, I'm sure that the Anti-Trust division of the DOJ will be scrutinizing Apple for absolutely no reason and will ignore the transgressions of Yahoo! simply because Yahoo! will never have the market that Apple does. Apparently it's ok to be an *******, just as long as you're not the most successful *******.
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iPod Yahoo! = Standard Oil
- Thread starter SPUY767
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Weird. Though, in reality, anti-trust laws aren't considered breached unless a single company holds more than 80% of the market share. As Apple is just around the 3/4 mark, it's quite sensible to examine Apple's business practices. Of course, all they'll find is that Apple provides a product far superior to any other company. Yahoo! and the others simply must realize that undercutting prices and providing subscription services won't help them attract customers from Apple. They'll have to provide a product as easy, extensive, intuitive, and trendy as iTunes/iPod.
Honestly, I don't think that the DoJ would even look at the iTunes Music Store and Apple at all. I'm sure that they don't consider digital music downloads a major industry and instead just group it in with all music sales, which when digital music sales and brick-and-mortar music sales are grouped together, Apple's share goes down a bit. That's why I see no reason for your worries of the DoJ coming and declaring Apple's iTMS a monopoly.
And even if it were to happen, we know that anti-trust cases don't work in this country anymore (ATT, Microsoft).
And even if it were to happen, we know that anti-trust cases don't work in this country anymore (ATT, Microsoft).
SPUY767 said:
But Yahoo doesn't have the marketshare yet.
At this point in time, Microsoft is the real Standard Oil. They have such a high marketshare they don't need to compete and can artificially inflate the prices as high as they want and customers will be forced to pay. And when they enter a market, they do the same thing you say Yahoo does. Look at the XBox. They sold a $400 (thats the cost to build) console for $300 at a $100 loss, bought Bungie, bought Rare, and a few other companies while they were at it. That's illegal dumping and buying a market share, both of which are considered monopolistic.
Veldek said:
Yes, its called preditory pricing. You can get nailed for it even if you do not have a monopoly.
Chaszmyr said:
Although -$1 billion a year losses sure kills that model
They can say it was SUPPOSED to be profit generating, but when you have game sales like Halo 2 and STILL take several hundred million dollars in losses, you're obviously dumping it for WAY too much a loss.
You're probably right in that being how they justified it though.
they will only get scrutinised once the companies market share gets above what that company believes to be a monopoly - so in the uk i believe it to be something like 65% (i cant rembmer off the top of my head- might even be 50%).
up to that point they are not even looked at.
up to that point they are not even looked at.