Apple Claims DOJ Sides With The Monopoly

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Apple likes playing the victim in cases like this, but this is a bit much...even for them. Claiming the DOJ is defending the monopoly might work in the court of public opinion but I think they are going to end up settling (like everyone else has).

In US District Court filing yesterday, Apple claimed that "the Government's Complaint against Apple is fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law," going on to say that "Apple has not 'conspired' with anyone, was not aware of any alleged 'conspiracy' by others, and never 'fixed prices.'" Apple even acusses the government of "[siding] with monopoly, rather than competition."
 
You're spitting in the ocean Apple, this probably won't change anything.
 
Amazon. Apple gallantly went and fought the good fight for us little guys to help slay the evil Amazon monopoly that the book publishers feared :)

Apple wanted everyone to pay more for books and tried to set prices higher. To me, competition is when companies fight to beat the others prices, not forcing other to raise prices.
 
Amazon. Apple gallantly went and fought the good fight for us little guys to help slay the evil Amazon monopoly that the book publishers feared :)

Thank goodness that Apple showed up to save us from low priced ebooks!

What would we have done without them?
 
Apple wanted everyone to pay more for books and tried to set prices higher. To me, competition is when companies fight to beat the others prices, not forcing other to raise prices.

Heh in this case, competition would of resulted in higher prices. Kind of the opposite for the reason of fighting against monopolies (one that amazon doesn't have).

Is Apple laywers on drugs? Hopefully the Judge doesn't forget about B&N.
 
The lawyers had a dream. They dreamed of someone who is no longer living giving them explicit instructions for court. In the dream it was someone in his casket, but somehow had great power an influence over Apple. Who is that somebody? The lawyers only knew that they must obey.
 
Why do i get this mental image of Steve Jobs in his corporate boardroom doing the ghost thing they did in "Return of the Jedi?"
"The money is with you!, Use the Lawyers Luke! Use the Lawyers!" :p
 
Apple wanted everyone to pay more for books and tried to set prices higher. To me, competition is when companies fight to beat the others prices, not forcing other to raise prices.

The confusion stems from Apple using the wrong word.:rolleyes:

Correct term is collusion.
 
And you thought Steve Jobs was fucked in the head when he was coked out of his skull promising nuclear war against google Android..
 
Ya, Amazon was such an evil monopoly they wouldn't be nice to poor Apple and charge higher prices to make it easier for Apple to compete. What jerks. How dare they develop good technology first and then not charge a shitload for it. Oh and please ignore B&N, they don't count...

Seriously Apple needs to quite with this "poor little me" game, nobody is buying it.
 
Fixing prices is certainly not an honest thing to do. I am also not sure how this would save us from Amazon's so called monopoly. Monopolies generally undercut everyone else with price, buy out the competition, and then raise prices sky high. How would apple charging more from ebooks destroy amazon? If anything, it would make more people buy from them (of course, I know nothing of economics so this is pure speculation.)
 
Apple has a problem. That problem is that the DoJ has Steven Jobs on words on this issue. Apple was engaged in collusion and price fixing, not competition. Tough row to hoe.
 
Bwah ahahahaha

"Your honor, we wanted to take our 30% cut on ebook sales, but ebook retailers won't sell us books because they would be selling us books at half the price they sell them to amazon and other ebook retailers, so they refuse to sell us books given how we won't match Amazon etc prices because to do so, we would have to break our 30% profit margin on everything sold and settle for the 2% profit margin all other ebook retailers take!"

Quick! Quick! Bestbuy! Take Amazon to court for price fixing! They are setting prices too low on TV's, and you just can't stay in business!
 
Fixing prices is certainly not an honest thing to do. I am also not sure how this would save us from Amazon's so called monopoly. Monopolies generally undercut everyone else with price, buy out the competition, and then raise prices sky high. How would apple charging more from ebooks destroy amazon? If anything, it would make more people buy from them (of course, I know nothing of economics so this is pure speculation.)

This is from what i'm understanding. I'm not really into ebooks but let me know if i'm getting this right.

Amazon gets their items cheap by buying in massive bulks, a $10 book can be had for $7 if you buy 10,000 units, this saving then gets passed on to the consumer. Apples pricing means you no longer get discounts. A $10 book is still $10 so buying in bulk no longer works.

Amazons business scheme, like any retailer, has been to go for high quantity low price per unit. Apples scheme, as always, has been on low quantity, premium price. What's happening is Amazon being forced to adopt apples premium prices on their inventory, which goes against a normal retailers methodology.

Normally, competition means that this shouldn't happen. Any publisher that decides to raise his price will be committing suicide because people will simply go to their competitors to get their genres. What apple did was provide some sort of venue to tell each publisher what the others are thinking, so instead of a single publisher going forward with the new pricing scheme and getting his head cut off, all of them coordinated and did it at the same time. Thus competition was eliminated.

When you go after a company for indecent business practice, can you also go after the non-employees that served as company advisors? That's basically the entire issue and Apples involvement from what i'm getting.

Of course, i'm no business major so i'm just tossing things out over here.
 
This is from what i'm understanding. I'm not really into ebooks but let me know if i'm getting this right.

Amazon gets their items cheap by buying in massive bulks, a $10 book can be had for $7 if you buy 10,000 units, this saving then gets passed on to the consumer. Apples pricing means you no longer get discounts. A $10 book is still $10 so buying in bulk no longer works.

Amazons business scheme, like any retailer, has been to go for high quantity low price per unit. Apples scheme, as always, has been on low quantity, premium price. What's happening is Amazon being forced to adopt apples premium prices on their inventory, which goes against a normal retailers methodology.

Normally, competition means that this shouldn't happen. Any publisher that decides to raise his price will be committing suicide because people will simply go to their competitors to get their genres. What apple did was provide some sort of venue to tell each publisher what the others are thinking, so instead of a single publisher going forward with the new pricing scheme and getting his head cut off, all of them coordinated and did it at the same time. Thus competition was eliminated.

When you go after a company for indecent business practice, can you also go after the non-employees that served as company advisors? That's basically the entire issue and Apples involvement from what i'm getting.

Of course, i'm no business major so i'm just tossing things out over here.

Sounds about right to me. I just hope the DoJ hits them more than the usual slap on the wrist.
 
Yep. Apple is pissing in the wind on this one. While Amazon had/has an effective majority of the market they weren't using their power to really kill off competition. They kept new releases/best sellers at a lower price point than the publishers wanted for a simple reason ... hook them with a low price and they'll buy more product. Not a whole lot different than WalMart, Costco, and other stores that keep pricing low and volume very high.

You only get government intervention when your effective monopoly is abused. Just having an effective monopoly isn't enough. You have to abuse the position for the government to step in. If Amazon was abusing their effective power in the e-book market then they'd have been subject to an investigation but the reality was they weren't. They were providing cheaper prices than anyone else despite their massive market share.

Apple's problem with this was simple. They don't like competing on price. Never have. They don't typically have "sales" on their products or adjusting pricing very fast to meet the market. They set their price and that's that. They don't lower the price until they're ready to introduce the next version. They weren't going to sell much product in e-books if they were selling the same thing Amazon was for 20% more.

Price fixing from the publishers was the only way to eliminate that problem so Apple enabled their fondest dream and then Apple didn't have to worry about pricing anymore. They only had to worry about the interface, the thing they were actually good at. Because, once you eliminate price as competition on e-books the only reason left to choose one e-book store over another is interface and selection. Unfortunately for Apple, Amazon already had most people quite happy with its selection and ebook reader so their dream of ripping Amazon's market share away from them didn't materialize. But, that was their goal without a doubt. The fact that their tactic didn't work as they wanted it to doesn't mean they aren't guilty of collusion to fix prices.
 
Apple has a problem. That problem is that the DoJ has Steven Jobs on words on this issue. Apple was engaged in collusion and price fixing, not competition. Tough row to hoe.

Yea really. I mean they have him on record saying "the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway."

I really hope apple fights this to the end and I hope they get slammed for it.
 
This kind of thing is why I hate Apple and will never buy or own any of their products. I'm not even a big eReader fan as I prefer physical books but still... Apple comes in acting like they revolutionized the market and did so many amazing things when the only thing they've done is charge more money for the same product everyone else is selling and somehow managed to brain wash everyone in to believing that their product is better.
 
Sad how once Apply called MS the evil empire & now has become even more evil empire than MS could ever be.
 
Apple likes playing the victim in cases like this, but this is a bit much...even for them. Claiming the DOJ is defending the monopoly might work in the court of public opinion but I think they are going to end up settling (like everyone else has).

Steve,

Your supposed to keep us informed on these topic, why didn't you tell us Apple hired former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf to oversee it's legal strategies?
 
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