Apple e-book appeal: Higher new release prices boosted competition

Antitrust laws aren't supposed to "keep prices down at any cost," Apple says.

Read the whole story

 

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"Apple’s entry brought enhanced competition with Amazon via catalogue expansion, free e-book offerings, and improved e-reader software," Apple wrote. "Before Apple’s entry Amazon was setting 90% of prices for all brands; afterward, while Amazon continued to use the wholesale model for the bulk of its business, there were tens of thousands of new price-setters in the market. The result was that although some prices increased, others decreased, and, across the relevant market, prices on average decreased."

While this is true -- the marketplace became better when Apple joined -- it wasn't because of Apple colluding with the major publishers to raise prices. It was because Apple brought more customers into the market and increased competition by adding another platform for e-books to be consumed on. For Apple to try to correlate market growth with the raising of prices is disingenuous.

 

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Nijyo[/url]":1pt5f3zk]

theJonTech[/url]":1pt5f3zk]Agree with some points disagree with others

However I do know Amazon has vastly improved their offerings since Apple entered the market

And I am much more likely to buy another Kindle then I was pre ibooks

I agree.

While I'm probably not smart enough to tell exactly what's going on in this appeal, the fact that within a year or two the eBook market went from almost solely centered around Amazon to being distributed between Amazon, B&N and Apple, suggests to me that Apple's tactics in this were, in the end, unintuitively pro-competition instead of anti-competitive.

Don't conflate Apple colluding to raise prices, and Apple entering the market -- it's much more likely that Apple's entry into the e-book market is what caused the market to grow substantially.

 

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Mr Slippery[/url]":3vpjg4h9]Amazing naïveté by the Apple bashers, about Amazon, simultaneously with extreme cynicism about Apple

Are you speaking about the court of law that ruled on this case, or people commenting on this article? Because if you're saying that Apple did no wrong, and that Amazon was in the wrong, you should have been Apple's lawyer since the ones they have obviously aren't as knowledgeable in the law as you are -- mister anonymous forum poster.

 

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rogifan[/url]":1x048mku]Where is the hard cold evidence that Apple fixed prices?

Here's the judges decision, have a read.