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EU probes Amazon and Apple’s ebook cartel

by on17 November 2015


It seems that Jobs Mob has not learnt about not playing monopoly

While it waits for the US Supreme Court to let it off the hook for the last book cartel it organised, fruity cargo cult Apple is about to face an investigation for another one.


Germany's Federal Cartel Office has begun an investigation into Apple arrangement with Amazon for purchasing audiobooks.

Both companies had a long-term agreement for the purchase of audio books by Apple from Amazon's Audible business for distribution via Apple's iTunes store.

Cartel office chief Andreas Mundt said that the two had a strong position in the digital offering of audiobooks in Germany and it was important to examine the agreement between these two competitors in the audiobooks in more detail.

The move is interesting in that Apple’s last game of monopoly was apparently because Amazon already had most of the market so Jobs Mob had to arrange a cartel with publishers to squeeze more money out of readers. Now it seems thatApple is keen on building another alliance with its apparent arch-nemesis.

Apple and Amazon-unit Audible have declined to comment audibly.

In September, the association of German book sellers lodged complaints with the watchdog that Amazon and Audible were building a monopoly in the audio book business.

The association said that Amazon and Audible were abusing their dominant market position to force publishers to accept "unreasonable conditions" for the marketing of audio books.

It said more than 90 percent of all downloads of audio books in Germany were made via the Audible or Amazon sites, or via the iTunes store, which is exclusively supplied by Audible.

In June, the European Commission opened an investigation into Amazon's e-book business, examining whether clauses in its contracts prevented publishers from offering more favourable deals to competitors.

On of Apple's problems is a deep psychological problem that it does not believe that it does anything wrong.  When the courts tried to get a nice man to explain to them why settling up monopolies was evil, they appealed to lots of other courts so it could ignore him.

By appealing to the Supreme Court Apple is still refusing to admit it has done anything wrong and meanwhile it does new deals with Amazon.  We guess the only thing left is for the company to be treated like other criminal cartels as Apple does not really see fines as a deterant. Maybe if the EU seized Apple's European cash mountain it might listen or arrested all its executives.

Last modified on 17 November 2015
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