Bradley McEwan
Business Policy & Strategy
“Apple's Price-Fixing Penalties Don't Go Beyond E-Books” As some of us may know, the technological giant “Apple Inc” along with six other major publishers was accused of price fixing in 2012. The Department of Justice accused the companies of conspiring of banding together to fix the prices of e-books in an attempt to compete against Amazon’s cheaply priced e-books and chip away at its Kindle lead in the e-book market. After trials this year, Apple was found guilty as being the leader amongst the culprits who set out to put the plan in motion and faced penalties sought out by the Department of Justice. The main injunction sought out by the Department of Justice was for an antitrust monitor to be put in place over all Apple’s digital products, not limited to e-books only. This Business Week article is based on the ruling in which a federal judge has granted the U.S government the injunction they sought but limited the over sight to just the e-book market. The decision did come as a shock as prosecutors argued that anticompetitive behavior would lead to the same behavior in another field, however, the federal judge in the case based her ruling on the worries that too much oversight would be “hampering the company’s ability to innovate.” As an outside consultant looking at the problem, I believe its sufficient to say Apple should look for alter methods of increasing their presence in the e-book market. They got off the hook
