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Originally Posted by pwalker8
From what I've heard, I don't think that the Gov't has proven it's case. First, the big news was that B&N was talking to the publishers about agency pricing well before Apple entered into negotiations. It's something that the book publishers had been pushing for a number of years.
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Which is irrelevant. Agency pricing isn't illegal. The case hinges on whether Apple arranged a collusion between the publishers to bring about agency pricing simultaneously.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Second, at the time, Amazon had something like 90% or more of the ebook market at the time. According to testimony, after opening up the iTunes ebooks story, Apple has had a fairly steady 20% of the ebook market, this includes a year of Apple not enforcing it's most favored nation clause, which kind of blows the Gov't case out of the water.
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Which is also irrelevant. Colluding to bring about agency pricing isn't excused just because a competitor has a large market share and there doesn't seem to be another way to break into it.
Incidentally, the 20% hasn't been steady. This is a myth based on a slide presented at Steve Jobs' keynote at WWDC 2010:
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20.../#.UcdkQyinbD0
Jobs reported that to date at that time ebook sales via iBooks accounted for 22% of the ebook sales of 5 of the big 6 publishers. However, as he said that, a slide flashed up behind him which said "22% share of total ebook sales".
That got picked up and requoted as 22% of the ebook market share.
It seems more likely that back then iBooks had about 8 to 10% of the market, and we're being told now that this has grown to 20%.
Graham