Apple says DoJ "sides with monopoly, rather than competition"

[bgalbrecht]

From Apple's answer:

At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute. Apple’s entry spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading experience.

From my perspective, the product selection was wholly controlled by the publishers. For the most part Macmillan refused to sell ebooks, at least for their Tor subsidiary. Pricing was certainly influenced by the publishers by them setting the wholesale price of the ebooks, but all of the retailers were discounting some or all of their books. Amazon generally discounted their ebooks by lowering the price, the rest of the retailers usually discounted the price through store rebates. If it's true that Apples entry spurred tremendous growth in ebook titles, it's only because the publishers were unhappy about their lack of pricing control for ebooks, and that they only opened the floodgates after they used the leverage from their agreements with Apple to cancel the existing agreements with the rest of the retailers.

Since I nearly always bought ebooks with discounts and/or rebates, and almost never bought ebooks that were priced above the lowest price print edition (usually MMPB), I know that the prices I pay for BPH ebooks are greater now than before April 1, 2010. I was not buying ebooks from Amazon. I don't see how paying more for ebooks has benefited me (except for increased selection).

Since I'm not a lawyer, I don't know whether Apple's "we didn't illegally collude" arguments will stand up, but I can see where they could make a case that they were an unintentional and unwitting partner in an illegal publisher collusion.