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The settling publishers can still offer agency contracts to Apple and indeed to all bookstores. They just can't bar the retailers from discounting the agency price-which kind of defeats the purpose of the agency model. TBH, the settling publishers might as well just go back to wholesale, which means Apple would have to set prices, not the publishers. Apple isn't set up to do that, which would mean the administration and hassle of setting and adjusting thousands of prices, developing pricing algorithms, etc.
Apple can still get the pure agency model from 3 of 6 publishers-including Random House, the biggest of them all. They might just deal with those 3.
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