Patrick_S
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2000
- Messages
- 3,313
Should I rearrange the deck chairs while the band plays on?This round. It's not over.
Should I rearrange the deck chairs while the band plays on?This round. It's not over.
It really is incorrect to call Amazon a monopoly but I would be interested to know why you think it is one. Their market share is not reason enough to label it one. Interestingly you question how Apple could enter the e-Book business without going the route they did, seriously? Apple of all companies in the world is probably the one that is best suited to enter the business without breaking any laws.If you are Apple how do you enter the books business without going this route against a standing monopoly? If I'm in Apple's shoes I might see the -potential- of monopoly charges against me as a very low probability CoDB.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/apple_e_book_price_fixing_federal_judge_rules_in_amazon_s_favor.htmlHow do you compete with a crazy person, a guy who seems congenitally allergic to profits? When it entered the e-book market, Apple had two choices. First, it could out-crazy Amazon—it certainly had the cash reserves to take a similar loss on e-books, to sell them at $9.99 or less in order to become a leader in the business. But Apple had no desire to do that. Documents in the case make clear that it didn’t see much value in competing on price, especially because it believed the iPad offered a better experience than the Kindle for e-books. Apple also had no interest in losing any money, whereas at Apple, profits are inviolable—the only real point of doing anything.
But how could Apple make a profit on e-books if the prevailing price, set by Amazon, was below cost? There was only one way: by working with publishers to force Amazon to raise its prices. To do so, Apple proposed that publishers adopt the “agency model” for e-books. Under this model, a publisher sets the retail price of the book, and the e-book store—i.e., Apple and Amazon—would take 30 percent of that price
Thank goodness we still have a monopoly and one weak competitor and the rest of the challengers unable to survive? Really?It’s possible to sympathize with the publishers in this saga. With their business models in peril, they were stuck between two behemoths and had little leverage; though it’s illegal, collusion might have seemed like the only way to fight back against Amazon. But I really can’t see anything good in Apple’s effort. Jobs embarked on a strategy that had the effect of helping Apple and potentially helping publishers, but by raising prices on every customer. It was shameful. It was also a failure, and now, despite the iPad and the iBookstore, Amazon is still the undisputed leader of the worldwide market for e-books. Thank goodness.
This comment begs the question, what the hell have you been reading? It is clear as day that what Apple did was anti-consumer. Their horizontal price fixing scheme with the publishers resulted in an anti-competitive environment that resulted in higher prices for the consumer. How more obvious would it have to be for you to see that as anti-consumer?DaveF said:I've not followed this case. But the bit I've read it's not obvious Apples actions were anti-consumer.
Examine the chart in this article to see what happened to prices when Apple entered the market.If it caused prices to increase.
Interesting. Are those retail prices to consumer?Walter Kittel said:Examine the chart in this article to see what happened to prices when Apple entered the market. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/10/a-judge-says-apple-fixed-e-book-prices-this-chart-shows-how-they-did-it/ - Walter.