I never said Apple should, could or would have ever considered not allowing MP3 or music from other sources. I actually said:
The comment I replied to was:
"Apple 'allowing' music from other sources is simply survival. The iPod and iTunes store would have been dead in the water if iPods could only play Fairplay AAC. People would have bought alternatives if they couldn't play their pirated MP3s."
I can see that making thousands of posts over the last nine years makes you feel superior, but at least try to keep track of which comments you are replying to.
Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" slogan pre-dated iPods.
Apple didn't need to support "pirated" mp3s, they needed to support the mp3s people had been making with iTunes.
Wait, that would only be true if Apple was writing all their native apps and making it hard to install any competing ones.
Apple is the exclusive seller of native iPhone apps. They do their best to make it impossible to install any competing apps.
And before the iStore, there were plenty of places to buy Symbian, PalmOS and Blackberry apps. The issue now is that Apple's store has power over the devs, and Apple is saying that if you want to sell at our store, the only good source of sales, you cannot make the product so as to be saleable in those other stores.
You are fundamentally in error. A "monopoly" is not required for the antitrust laws to be brought into play. What is required is market power in a defined market.
But how much market power? Isn't "monopoly power" a requirement for many of the varied antitrust laws?
"Apple 'allowing' music from other sources is simply survival. The iPod and iTunes store would have been dead in the water if iPods could only play Fairplay AAC. People would have bought alternatives if they couldn't play their pirated MP3s."
I can see that making thousands of posts over the last nine years makes you feel superior, but at least try to keep track of which comments you are replying to.
Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" slogan pre-dated iPods.
Apple didn't need to support "pirated" mp3s, they needed to support the mp3s people had been making with iTunes.
None of which has any bearing on the DoJ investigation nor would result in the investigation being cancelled. You know, sort of the point. Try to keep up with the thread. Otherwise, your posts only add noise.
For example, manufacturing companies can offer marketing dollars to their retailers. It has long been determined that it's OK for the manufacturer to only offer the marketing dollars to companies which follow MSRP.
That is called "retail price maintenance". I would be very surprised if companies with monopoly power in a market were allowed to do that.
But the problem is that the DoJ sometimes comes up with situational definitions of 'market power,' often justified in opaque economics jargon. Courts have sometimes struck it down.
All definitions of market power are justified in opaque economics jargon. That is the proper mode of analysis.
should it really be considered a monopoly if no one WANTS to spend their money on the alternatives?
and how can you say it is wrong for distributor to dictate terms to the supplier but not the other way around?
Did the big publishing houses not have the opportunity to negotiate ANYTHING AT ALL with Apple? Were they FORCED to unconditionally accept Apple's terms?
Maybe they were and did so from a position of desperation and now that Apple as a distributor has some real benefit in the market place the media owners have decided they want to renegotiate but rather than doing it around a table they are doing it in a courthouse etc.
The definition is inherently situational, so there's no escaping the need for interpretation. Many times I think it comes down to an operational definition. If a company has behaved in markets in ways that no other can, then market power becomes essentially self-evident. If a company, for example, can insist on exclusive dealing, and get away with it, then by that evidence alone they have market power.
Here's a few definitions. I endorse none of them in particular. But some of them bear out (in part) the "behaved in markets in a ways that no other can" definition. But they specifically refer to the power to raise prices. And they do not require the absence of other, similarly empowered players.
--# In economics, market power is the ability of a firm to alter the market price of a good or service. A firm with market power can raise prices ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power
# 1. Ability of a firm or other market participant to influence price by varying the amount that it chooses to buy or sell. 2. Ability of a country to influence world prices by altering its trade policies.
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/m.html
# When one or a few large companies dominate power production in a regional market and use such dominance to manipulate the market.
the trouble there is that mobile apps aren't flexible. you can no more use an iphone app on an android (and vice versa) than you can use a PSP game on an Xbox.
.
That is the crux of the matter with the other DOJ investigation.
Apps can be written so as to be "flexible", such that they will run on the iPhone AND Android.
But Apple will accept only apps that are not flexible. Is that OK for somebody with as much market power in the dev community as Apple?
The market for software for mobile devices. Check out Handango for an example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikieV
Are apps for Windows phone, Symbian, Android, Blackberry, and iPhone all considered to be in the same "mobile app retail market"?
It depends. But given that tools exist to write for all (many?) of those platforms at once, then I think they are in the same market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikieV
If so, then I guess it is good news for Apple that Android is becoming so popular - because it makes it even less likely that Apple can be perceived as having a monopoly-position in that market.
Agreed. And I don't know the relevance of the timeline - do they look at the facts as of the tome of the decision, or as of the time of the complaint?
And I wonder if actual harm needs to be shown, or only the intent to cause such harm.
I was talking about the case of Amazon's offer to the labels to take part in their promotion, without the requirement of advanced, exclusive access. It would simply be agreeing to take part in an Amazon promotion. Apple still pressuring the labels not to take part.
As far as how does it interfere, well how does it not? In that same way that MS interfered with their OEMs trade and business with Netscape, using their marketing dollars. The OEMs stated that MS threatened to withhold marketing support if they agreed to place the Netscape shortcut on the desktop (amongst other threats) which amounted to promoting Netscape. This interfered with the OEMs ability to separately do business and trade with Netscape. Apple threatening to withhold marketing support from the labels if they agree to promote with Amazon doesn't seem so very different.
Apple can and should use their marketing assistance to influence their dealings with the labels. Should they use it to influence how the labels can deal with Amazon? When iTunes was first launching, would you have been accepting of Walmart threatening the labels to remove any marketing support from them if they agreed to terms with Apple that Walmart didn't like?
a) As you mentioned before, they "reportedly" ...
b) It still doesn't make sense for Apple to spend money on the promotion of songs which the record labels have established special deals with a competitor for. Are you saying the record labels ought to be able to dictate which songs Apple promotes and how much they spend?
c) If anyone has market dominance here, it's the record labels. They are able to dictate price, who gets DRM free music, have exclusive control of music from individual artists, etc., etc. All Apple gets to choose is what the will spend their money promoting.
d) The situation is not at all analogous to Microsoft/Netscape. Microsoft used its monopoly position in personal computer operating system to attempt to leverage control of other technologies -- i.e., web browsers, and arguably the web itself. In this case, even if we assume the worst of Apple, they will have used a leading position in online music sales to avoid being forced by the record labels to spend marketing dollars as the labels dictate.
minor correction. At the time that the advance sales existed (apparently Amazon recently dropped that as a requirement in the program) it was before ANYONE else could sell the item. Online or Brick and Mortar.
Thank you for the correction. Seems anti-competitive to me, leveraging Amazon's large CD sales to cut out the competition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tulkas
...The restructuring Amazon proposed eliminated the advanced access for some songs (hence, it being 'just a sale'). The original Billboard article reported that Apple still pressured the labels not take part.
...
--From the Billboard article--
---------------------
".....When Amazon first launched the Daily Deal in June 2008, its primary aim was to drive more customer traffic to the online retail giant's MP3 store. "The labels paid nothing for being included in that privilege, nor were they asked," a major-label head of sales says.
But in mid-2009, the executive says, "that promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date."
In exchange for a Daily Deal promotion on a new album, Amazon has been asking labels to provide it with a one-day exclusive before street date and such digital marketing support as a banner ad on an artist's MySpace page and messages on label and artist Web sites and social network feeds.
"When that happened," the executive says, "iTunes said, 'Enough of that shit.' "
Sources say that iTunes representatives have been urging labels to rethink their participation in the Amazon promotion and that they have backed up those warnings by withdrawing marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals......
To help labels sidestep iTunes' objections, Amazon has been fine-tuning its Daily Deal pitch on new titles, agreeing, for instance, to forgo the one-day exclusive window on certain ones. But executives familiar with the situation say iTunes has continued to voice its displeasure with other aspects of the promotion, such as label marketing support."
-----------------
So in 2008 the Daily Deal didn't have the 1 day exclusive and no grumbling from Apple mentioned in the article.
In 2009, the Amazon one day exclusive was introduced that included "digital marketing support as a banner ad on an artist's MySpace page and messages on label and artist Web sites and social network feeds." That's when Apple objected and said they would pull their promotions and marketing from the iTunes Store, which is more than reasonable. Look at the numbers sold by Amazon on the Daily Deal.(re: Mariah Carey's "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" U.S. sales of 168,000 units -Vampire Weekend's "Contra," U.S. sales of 124,000)
Soooooo, not only was Amazon getting a one day exclusive the Labels were to provide free promotion on their websites and the artists were to do the same. Anti-competitive much?
Finally, the article states Apple is "voicing their displeasure" even with the Daily Deal sans the exclusive, but it doesn't say Apple is pulling their marketing / promotions over these deals, even though Apple would be correct in pulling marketing / promotion over this deal also.
I'm so tired of everyone claiming Apple wields so much power. Where the heck was the power when Amazon got DRM free music long before Apple (re: and not a peep from Apple)? Where the heck was all this power when the Labels forced Apple to sell it's DRM free music at a higher rate than Amazon? Where the heck was all this power when the Labels forced Apple into variable rate pricing?
The truth of the matter is that Apple is under attack not only by the competition but by the Labels and they finally said,"Enough of that %#(!".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tulkas
I expect Apple to compete. I don't expect them to interfere with the business and trade of other companies. I don't expect MS to do it, Walmart to do it nor Apple to do it.
Apple is not interfering, they are only holding off providing free marketing and promotion, which costs money, since Amazon's anti-competitive behavior limits Apple's sales.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevie
That is beside the point. The point has nothing to do with Apple selling its dev tools.
apple is saying that if a dev wants to sell a title at the iStore, it may not be written in a manner which will allow it to be sold elsewhere. Instead, it must be written in a manner that gives Apple an exclusive title.
Perhaps the reason they are doing this is to use their app market power in order to disadvantage other platforms, and other handset makers.
I think that is what is being looked into.
You are wrong. Developers are free to write their apps for any other platform, Apple in no way is telling developers that apps for their store are an exclusive.
Maybe someone should write a cross compiler based on Apple's tools, APIs and SDKs, if this is even possible, I'm not a programmer. That way a developer could write the app in C, C++, objC for Apple then just cross compile to other OSes.
How is Apple interfering with anything? They simply said that if Amazon gets a song first that Apple will not highlight that song on iTMS. That's perfectly reasonable and legal.
If it were "perfectly...legal" it is unlikely that the DOJ would investigate. It remains to be seen whether it was perfectly or imperfectly legal, or whether it was some degree of illegal.
We have neither the necessary full facts, nor the extremely complex frame of reference required to make that decision. Once the facts come out, and once we learn which statute is being applied, we will be in a better position to form opinions.
So, it is OK to you for Apple, or any other company with a strong market position to 'suggest' to other companies how they can trade and form contracts?
If a company with a strong market position suggests that, I would think it to be OK.
If a company with monopoly power suggests that, I would think that it is an abuse of monopoly power, because it is no longer a suggestion, but instead, a command.
If an offer is made which cannot be refused, is it still an offer? How about a suggestion?
I am not American but I find it so funny how the federal government decides which company to investigate.
Apple is getting a taste of what Microsoft experienced in the last decade when the Feds wanted to break up the company in two. It cost the company money, they lost focus and look at the state of MS today.
At least back then, it was not done in a time of economic recession. Shouldn't the Feds focus their attention on something more important? Where were the regulators when the US had a housing bubble, an oil leak in the Gulf, a banking crisis and so on?
I say to the American people and their governing bodies: leave one of your last remaining great icons alone. You do not have much left in terms of really great companies like Apple.
Yes, this is all an American thing, like the EU never went after Microsoft. And they went after them for the wrong things: not wanting Microsoft to include IE with the OS or for a while, they even wanted Microsoft not to incorporate things such as audio or video playback in the browser. It would be like telling a car manufacturer that they couldn't include GPS or a car radio or air conditioner. The EU investigators obsessed for months (or possibly longer) over how easy it was to install another browser and we all know that it's actually quite easy and always was.
Besides, the government has not "gone after" Apple as yet. All they've done so far is ask other companies about what it's like to deal with Apple and what the terms of the agreements are to see if they are violating any trade laws.
In the end, they'll probably find one or two minor things that they'll ask Apple to change in their agreements and Apple will announce that they will do so voluntarily. Nothing major is going to come out of this. Most changes will probably be about wording in the contracts. I suspect the government may place certain restrictions on some of the exclusive deals that both Apple and Amazon do in that they can do exclusive deals, but they can't ban publishers from their store because they do an exclusive deal with the competition for certain tracks/books, etc. Some of these agreements or "bans" may be construed as being anti-competitive. No big deal.
You are wrong. Developers are free to write their apps for any other platform, Apple in no way is telling developers that apps for their store are an exclusive.
I spoke too broadly. The titles need not be exclusive. I was going for some kind of "effectively exclusive because the work cannot be sold elsewhere, but instead must be duplicated" sort of thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rickag
Maybe someone should write a cross compiler based on Apple's tools, APIs and SDKs, if this is even possible, I'm not a programmer. That way a developer could write the app in C, C++, objC for Apple then just cross compile to other OSes.
Y'know, I thought of that too. I don't understand why it is not a full and adequate solution.
Shit, forget about the early access. As I have repeated, the original BillBoard story says that Amazon went to the labels and offered to drop that requirement (not across the board). But even for those offerings that would be promoted without Amazon getting early access to, Apple still pressured the labels not to deal.
Since Apple's problem was then obviously not limited to the concern about early exclusive access, then they seem to have been concerned simply with deals that would result in the labels co-promoting with Amazon (with or without early access). So what they simply said was that if you partner with Amazon for promotion, we will not partner with you on marketing. Maybe that is OK. When MS said to their OEMs that if they promoted Netscape (i.e. place shortcut on the desktop) they wouldn't partner with them on marketing, was only wrong because they were a monopoly? It might have been legal if they weren't, but right?
So, it is OK to you for Apple, or any other company with a strong market position to 'suggest' to other companies how they can trade and form contracts?
The early access is important, as Amazon offered the Daily Deals in 2008 a year before they requested the 1 day exclusive with no participation in marketing and promotion from the Labels/Artists. And it seems Apple didn't grumble about this.
------
from the Billboard article concerning the original deal sans the 1 day exclusive:
""The labels paid nothing for being included in that privilege, nor were they asked," a major-label head of sales says."
------
from the Billboard article
" iTunes has continued to voice its displeasure with other aspects of the promotion, such as label marketing support.".
Amazon may be not be requiring the 1 day exclusive (though I believe they still offer it), but it appears they are still requesting the Labels chip in marketing and promotion for the Daily Deal nonetheless.
As to your contention in similarities between Apple and Microsoft:
The difference is that Microsoft was dictating to the computer manufacturers what they should or shouldn't do and threatening to withhold advertising $ to those manufacturers that did not comply. This would put those manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage to their rivals who did comply. On top of that, there were most likely contractual agreements between Microsoft and HP, Dell, Compac, Acer, etc. in advertising expenditures.
Apple is not dictating to another company on advertising, they own the iTunes store. What they are saying is that it is not worth Apple's time and money to promote a song, in their own online store, in which they are placed at a competitive disadvantage.
Comments
The government should encourage innovation and creativity.
They are trying to do exactly that by fostering competition in the relevant markets.
6 posts in and already a 'well duh' post.
I never said Apple should, could or would have ever considered not allowing MP3 or music from other sources. I actually said:
The comment I replied to was:
"Apple 'allowing' music from other sources is simply survival. The iPod and iTunes store would have been dead in the water if iPods could only play Fairplay AAC. People would have bought alternatives if they couldn't play their pirated MP3s."
I can see that making thousands of posts over the last nine years makes you feel superior, but at least try to keep track of which comments you are replying to.
Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" slogan pre-dated iPods.
Apple didn't need to support "pirated" mp3s, they needed to support the mp3s people had been making with iTunes.
Wait, that would only be true if Apple was writing all their native apps and making it hard to install any competing ones.
Apple is the exclusive seller of native iPhone apps. They do their best to make it impossible to install any competing apps.
And before the iStore, there were plenty of places to buy Symbian, PalmOS and Blackberry apps. The issue now is that Apple's store has power over the devs, and Apple is saying that if you want to sell at our store, the only good source of sales, you cannot make the product so as to be saleable in those other stores.
You are fundamentally in error. A "monopoly" is not required for the antitrust laws to be brought into play. What is required is market power in a defined market.
But how much market power? Isn't "monopoly power" a requirement for many of the varied antitrust laws?
The comment I replied to was:
"Apple 'allowing' music from other sources is simply survival. The iPod and iTunes store would have been dead in the water if iPods could only play Fairplay AAC. People would have bought alternatives if they couldn't play their pirated MP3s."
I can see that making thousands of posts over the last nine years makes you feel superior, but at least try to keep track of which comments you are replying to.
Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" slogan pre-dated iPods.
Apple didn't need to support "pirated" mp3s, they needed to support the mp3s people had been making with iTunes.
None of which has any bearing on the DoJ investigation nor would result in the investigation being cancelled. You know, sort of the point. Try to keep up with the thread. Otherwise, your posts only add noise.
For example, manufacturing companies can offer marketing dollars to their retailers. It has long been determined that it's OK for the manufacturer to only offer the marketing dollars to companies which follow MSRP.
That is called "retail price maintenance". I would be very surprised if companies with monopoly power in a market were allowed to do that.
Correct.
But the problem is that the DoJ sometimes comes up with situational definitions of 'market power,' often justified in opaque economics jargon. Courts have sometimes struck it down.
All definitions of market power are justified in opaque economics jargon. That is the proper mode of analysis.
and how can you say it is wrong for distributor to dictate terms to the supplier but not the other way around?
Did the big publishing houses not have the opportunity to negotiate ANYTHING AT ALL with Apple? Were they FORCED to unconditionally accept Apple's terms?
Maybe they were and did so from a position of desperation and now that Apple as a distributor has some real benefit in the market place the media owners have decided they want to renegotiate but rather than doing it around a table they are doing it in a courthouse etc.
The definition is inherently situational, so there's no escaping the need for interpretation. Many times I think it comes down to an operational definition. If a company has behaved in markets in ways that no other can, then market power becomes essentially self-evident. If a company, for example, can insist on exclusive dealing, and get away with it, then by that evidence alone they have market power.
Here's a few definitions. I endorse none of them in particular. But some of them bear out (in part) the "behaved in markets in a ways that no other can" definition. But they specifically refer to the power to raise prices. And they do not require the absence of other, similarly empowered players.
--# In economics, market power is the ability of a firm to alter the market price of a good or service. A firm with market power can raise prices ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power
# 1. Ability of a firm or other market participant to influence price by varying the amount that it chooses to buy or sell. 2. Ability of a country to influence world prices by altering its trade policies.
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/m.html
# When one or a few large companies dominate power production in a regional market and use such dominance to manipulate the market.
www.impa.com/glossary.asp
# The power that a firm has in a relevant market in the absence of effective competitive constraints in that market.
www.reckon.co.uk/open/Glossary
# Refers to a firm that can affect the quantity demanded of its product by varying its price.
http://www.mbs.edu/home/jgans/mecon/...y/Section2.htm
the trouble there is that mobile apps aren't flexible. you can no more use an iphone app on an android (and vice versa) than you can use a PSP game on an Xbox.
.
That is the crux of the matter with the other DOJ investigation.
Apps can be written so as to be "flexible", such that they will run on the iPhone AND Android.
But Apple will accept only apps that are not flexible. Is that OK for somebody with as much market power in the dev community as Apple?
"the mobile app retail market"???
What the heck is that?
The market for software for mobile devices. Check out Handango for an example.
Are apps for Windows phone, Symbian, Android, Blackberry, and iPhone all considered to be in the same "mobile app retail market"?
It depends. But given that tools exist to write for all (many?) of those platforms at once, then I think they are in the same market.
If so, then I guess it is good news for Apple that Android is becoming so popular - because it makes it even less likely that Apple can be perceived as having a monopoly-position in that market.
Agreed. And I don't know the relevance of the timeline - do they look at the facts as of the tome of the decision, or as of the time of the complaint?
And I wonder if actual harm needs to be shown, or only the intent to cause such harm.
I was talking about the case of Amazon's offer to the labels to take part in their promotion, without the requirement of advanced, exclusive access. It would simply be agreeing to take part in an Amazon promotion. Apple still pressuring the labels not to take part.
As far as how does it interfere, well how does it not? In that same way that MS interfered with their OEMs trade and business with Netscape, using their marketing dollars. The OEMs stated that MS threatened to withhold marketing support if they agreed to place the Netscape shortcut on the desktop (amongst other threats) which amounted to promoting Netscape. This interfered with the OEMs ability to separately do business and trade with Netscape. Apple threatening to withhold marketing support from the labels if they agree to promote with Amazon doesn't seem so very different.
Apple can and should use their marketing assistance to influence their dealings with the labels. Should they use it to influence how the labels can deal with Amazon? When iTunes was first launching, would you have been accepting of Walmart threatening the labels to remove any marketing support from them if they agreed to terms with Apple that Walmart didn't like?
a) As you mentioned before, they "reportedly" ...
b) It still doesn't make sense for Apple to spend money on the promotion of songs which the record labels have established special deals with a competitor for. Are you saying the record labels ought to be able to dictate which songs Apple promotes and how much they spend?
c) If anyone has market dominance here, it's the record labels. They are able to dictate price, who gets DRM free music, have exclusive control of music from individual artists, etc., etc. All Apple gets to choose is what the will spend their money promoting.
d) The situation is not at all analogous to Microsoft/Netscape. Microsoft used its monopoly position in personal computer operating system to attempt to leverage control of other technologies -- i.e., web browsers, and arguably the web itself. In this case, even if we assume the worst of Apple, they will have used a leading position in online music sales to avoid being forced by the record labels to spend marketing dollars as the labels dictate.
minor correction. At the time that the advance sales existed (apparently Amazon recently dropped that as a requirement in the program) it was before ANYONE else could sell the item. Online or Brick and Mortar.
Thank you for the correction. Seems anti-competitive to me, leveraging Amazon's large CD sales to cut out the competition.
...The restructuring Amazon proposed eliminated the advanced access for some songs (hence, it being 'just a sale'). The original Billboard article reported that Apple still pressured the labels not take part.
...
--From the Billboard article--
---------------------
".....When Amazon first launched the Daily Deal in June 2008, its primary aim was to drive more customer traffic to the online retail giant's MP3 store. "The labels paid nothing for being included in that privilege, nor were they asked," a major-label head of sales says.
But in mid-2009, the executive says, "that promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date."
In exchange for a Daily Deal promotion on a new album, Amazon has been asking labels to provide it with a one-day exclusive before street date and such digital marketing support as a banner ad on an artist's MySpace page and messages on label and artist Web sites and social network feeds.
"When that happened," the executive says, "iTunes said, 'Enough of that shit.' "
Sources say that iTunes representatives have been urging labels to rethink their participation in the Amazon promotion and that they have backed up those warnings by withdrawing marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals......
To help labels sidestep iTunes' objections, Amazon has been fine-tuning its Daily Deal pitch on new titles, agreeing, for instance, to forgo the one-day exclusive window on certain ones. But executives familiar with the situation say iTunes has continued to voice its displeasure with other aspects of the promotion, such as label marketing support."
-----------------
So in 2008 the Daily Deal didn't have the 1 day exclusive and no grumbling from Apple mentioned in the article.
In 2009, the Amazon one day exclusive was introduced that included "digital marketing support as a banner ad on an artist's MySpace page and messages on label and artist Web sites and social network feeds." That's when Apple objected and said they would pull their promotions and marketing from the iTunes Store, which is more than reasonable. Look at the numbers sold by Amazon on the Daily Deal.(re: Mariah Carey's "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" U.S. sales of 168,000 units -Vampire Weekend's "Contra," U.S. sales of 124,000)
Soooooo, not only was Amazon getting a one day exclusive the Labels were to provide free promotion on their websites and the artists were to do the same. Anti-competitive much?
Finally, the article states Apple is "voicing their displeasure" even with the Daily Deal sans the exclusive, but it doesn't say Apple is pulling their marketing / promotions over these deals, even though Apple would be correct in pulling marketing / promotion over this deal also.
I'm so tired of everyone claiming Apple wields so much power. Where the heck was the power when Amazon got DRM free music long before Apple (re: and not a peep from Apple)? Where the heck was all this power when the Labels forced Apple to sell it's DRM free music at a higher rate than Amazon? Where the heck was all this power when the Labels forced Apple into variable rate pricing?
The truth of the matter is that Apple is under attack not only by the competition but by the Labels and they finally said,"Enough of that %#(!".
I expect Apple to compete. I don't expect them to interfere with the business and trade of other companies. I don't expect MS to do it, Walmart to do it nor Apple to do it.
Apple is not interfering, they are only holding off providing free marketing and promotion, which costs money, since Amazon's anti-competitive behavior limits Apple's sales.
That is beside the point. The point has nothing to do with Apple selling its dev tools.
apple is saying that if a dev wants to sell a title at the iStore, it may not be written in a manner which will allow it to be sold elsewhere. Instead, it must be written in a manner that gives Apple an exclusive title.
Perhaps the reason they are doing this is to use their app market power in order to disadvantage other platforms, and other handset makers.
I think that is what is being looked into.
You are wrong. Developers are free to write their apps for any other platform, Apple in no way is telling developers that apps for their store are an exclusive.
Maybe someone should write a cross compiler based on Apple's tools, APIs and SDKs, if this is even possible, I'm not a programmer. That way a developer could write the app in C, C++, objC for Apple then just cross compile to other OSes.
How is Apple interfering with anything? They simply said that if Amazon gets a song first that Apple will not highlight that song on iTMS. That's perfectly reasonable and legal.
If it were "perfectly...legal" it is unlikely that the DOJ would investigate. It remains to be seen whether it was perfectly or imperfectly legal, or whether it was some degree of illegal.
We have neither the necessary full facts, nor the extremely complex frame of reference required to make that decision. Once the facts come out, and once we learn which statute is being applied, we will be in a better position to form opinions.
So, it is OK to you for Apple, or any other company with a strong market position to 'suggest' to other companies how they can trade and form contracts?
If a company with a strong market position suggests that, I would think it to be OK.
If a company with monopoly power suggests that, I would think that it is an abuse of monopoly power, because it is no longer a suggestion, but instead, a command.
If an offer is made which cannot be refused, is it still an offer? How about a suggestion?
I am not American but I find it so funny how the federal government decides which company to investigate.
Apple is getting a taste of what Microsoft experienced in the last decade when the Feds wanted to break up the company in two. It cost the company money, they lost focus and look at the state of MS today.
At least back then, it was not done in a time of economic recession. Shouldn't the Feds focus their attention on something more important? Where were the regulators when the US had a housing bubble, an oil leak in the Gulf, a banking crisis and so on?
I say to the American people and their governing bodies: leave one of your last remaining great icons alone. You do not have much left in terms of really great companies like Apple.
Yes, this is all an American thing, like the EU never went after Microsoft. And they went after them for the wrong things: not wanting Microsoft to include IE with the OS or for a while, they even wanted Microsoft not to incorporate things such as audio or video playback in the browser. It would be like telling a car manufacturer that they couldn't include GPS or a car radio or air conditioner. The EU investigators obsessed for months (or possibly longer) over how easy it was to install another browser and we all know that it's actually quite easy and always was.
Besides, the government has not "gone after" Apple as yet. All they've done so far is ask other companies about what it's like to deal with Apple and what the terms of the agreements are to see if they are violating any trade laws.
In the end, they'll probably find one or two minor things that they'll ask Apple to change in their agreements and Apple will announce that they will do so voluntarily. Nothing major is going to come out of this. Most changes will probably be about wording in the contracts. I suspect the government may place certain restrictions on some of the exclusive deals that both Apple and Amazon do in that they can do exclusive deals, but they can't ban publishers from their store because they do an exclusive deal with the competition for certain tracks/books, etc. Some of these agreements or "bans" may be construed as being anti-competitive. No big deal.
Freaking communists in the US Government telling everyone what to do. Laissez-Faire! Stay the hell out of business
Ken Lay would love you.
You are wrong. Developers are free to write their apps for any other platform, Apple in no way is telling developers that apps for their store are an exclusive.
I spoke too broadly. The titles need not be exclusive. I was going for some kind of "effectively exclusive because the work cannot be sold elsewhere, but instead must be duplicated" sort of thing.
Maybe someone should write a cross compiler based on Apple's tools, APIs and SDKs, if this is even possible, I'm not a programmer. That way a developer could write the app in C, C++, objC for Apple then just cross compile to other OSes.
Y'know, I thought of that too. I don't understand why it is not a full and adequate solution.
Adobe should do it.
Shit, forget about the early access. As I have repeated, the original BillBoard story says that Amazon went to the labels and offered to drop that requirement (not across the board). But even for those offerings that would be promoted without Amazon getting early access to, Apple still pressured the labels not to deal.
Since Apple's problem was then obviously not limited to the concern about early exclusive access, then they seem to have been concerned simply with deals that would result in the labels co-promoting with Amazon (with or without early access). So what they simply said was that if you partner with Amazon for promotion, we will not partner with you on marketing. Maybe that is OK. When MS said to their OEMs that if they promoted Netscape (i.e. place shortcut on the desktop) they wouldn't partner with them on marketing, was only wrong because they were a monopoly? It might have been legal if they weren't, but right?
So, it is OK to you for Apple, or any other company with a strong market position to 'suggest' to other companies how they can trade and form contracts?
The early access is important, as Amazon offered the Daily Deals in 2008 a year before they requested the 1 day exclusive with no participation in marketing and promotion from the Labels/Artists. And it seems Apple didn't grumble about this.
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from the Billboard article concerning the original deal sans the 1 day exclusive:
""The labels paid nothing for being included in that privilege, nor were they asked," a major-label head of sales says."
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from the Billboard article
" iTunes has continued to voice its displeasure with other aspects of the promotion, such as label marketing support.".
Amazon may be not be requiring the 1 day exclusive (though I believe they still offer it), but it appears they are still requesting the Labels chip in marketing and promotion for the Daily Deal nonetheless.
As to your contention in similarities between Apple and Microsoft:
The difference is that Microsoft was dictating to the computer manufacturers what they should or shouldn't do and threatening to withhold advertising $ to those manufacturers that did not comply. This would put those manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage to their rivals who did comply. On top of that, there were most likely contractual agreements between Microsoft and HP, Dell, Compac, Acer, etc. in advertising expenditures.
Apple is not dictating to another company on advertising, they own the iTunes store. What they are saying is that it is not worth Apple's time and money to promote a song, in their own online store, in which they are placed at a competitive disadvantage.