People are still going on about Apple's anti-competitiveness, probably because they didn't click through and actually read the linked article, so let me put out another excerpt:
Quote:
There was no ebook business to speak of until Amazon delivered the Kindle device, put massive muscle behind selling it, and used the ability they had then to sacrifice margin to create a powerful commercial proposition that was the catalyst to create the market. There was no serious competition for Amazon until Barnes & Noble’s new management delivered the Nook with an equally powerful commitment to establishing it, using their presence in stores to introduce ebook reading to new audiences and, with further innovation of the devices, contributing to the explosive growth of reading in digital formats.
There was no restraint on Amazon’s ability to use their deep pockets to discount publishers’ content in pursuit of their own market share growth until Apple’s new device, the iPad, created a whole new sales model that forced price stability in the marketplace and, at the same time, handed publishers a new capability to maximize revenue and to use price as a marketing tool.
There was no effective way to introduce book readers to the convenience of digital reading without the investment in a dedicated device until the iPad put the capability into millions of hands that didn’t know they wanted it.
There was no great motivation for ebook retailers to introduce interoperability across devices until many ebook device owners also became iPhone and iPad owners.
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Mike's analysis is spot on, and it blows apart Mobile Read mythology about how Amazon's ebook pricing policy 2007-2010 was "right", what was the point of agency pricing and who benefits, and whether Apple's policy is any more "anti-competitive" than the other booksellers . On the contrary, Apple's establishment of the Ios platform, creation of the Ibookstore, and support for agency pricing has made the ebook marketplace deeper and MORE competitive.