Quote:
Originally Posted by curtw
That is absolutely false. Apple did not sell digital music at a loss, hoping to "outlast" the competition. They offered music at a fair price, with a published profit margin. What the market decided was that this was a fair price and a superior user experience, and people flocked to it.
Amazon's $9.99 price was *only* designed to eliminate the competition, no matter how much you feel it benefited you, the customer. In the long run, if Amazon had been able to establish a monopoly in e-books, how much do you think books would cost?
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Amazon didn't sell e-books at a loss either, as DiapDealer just pointed out. And Apple spent two years selling iPods which they knew damn well were being filled with music at the best price of all - free. Once they'd established that "ecosystem" then they decided to get into music sales after twisting the arm off record companies that were desperate for some legal form of digital music.
Amazon's $9.99 price had a lot more to do with selling Kindles and developing an "ecosystem" than creating a monopoly. It worked on some people, not others - including me. I don't happen to believe that Amazon will ever be in a position to arbitrarily raise e-book prices to an inordinate level, there are too many easy ways to create alternative distribution systems, but if they do engage in abusive practices they're just as likely to get a visit from the DOJ as Apple and the BPH did.
The DOJ, quite rightly, is unwilling to accept current abusive practices on the basis that they might, possibly, maybe prevent some other abusive practice in the future.