Roger Fingas
Germany's Federal Cartel Office is investigating the details of Apple's deal for purchasing audiobooks from Amazon, given the companies' market leading positions, a report said on Monday.
Apple has a long-term agreement to buy audiobooks from Amazon's Audible service, which it then offers via the iTunes Store, the FCO pointed out in a statement obtained by Reuters. The agency didn't immediately suggest any wrongdoing, but noted that Apple and Amazon have a "strong position" in the German digital audiobook market.
"Therefore, we feel compelled to examine the agreement between these two competitors in the audiobooks in more detail," said FCO head Andreas Mundt.
European competition monitors have been scrutinizing a number of major American tech companies in the past few years, including Apple. In August, for instance, Apple was cleared of concerns that it might be colluding with record labels to undermine free music streaming services.
Notably, Apple has previously been accused of colluding with book publishers against Amazon in the realm of e-books. In the U.S. the matter has reached the Supreme Court, with Apple hoping to avoid paying a $450 million settlement.
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19 Comments
seems like amazon has the audio book market cornered between audible and this deal. i'm not even aware of an alternative path to getting an audio book (aside from CDs and tapes which are rapidly disappearing)
FWIW Amazon looks to be the primary interest.
By the way, why in the screaming hell has Samsung not yet paid off that reduced fine from their courtroom loss yet? Will it ever happen?
[quote name="SpamSandwich" url="/t/190201/german-government-probes-apples-audiobook-deal-with-amazon#post_2807079"]By the way, why in the screaming hell has Samsung not yet paid off that reduced fine from their courtroom loss yet? Will it ever happen?[/quote] About a month ago one of the appeals courts said Koh was correct and payment had to be made within 7 days, even tho some of the patent claims that the infringement damages were based on were likely invalid. Not sure why but another appeals court ruling then put that on hold yet again.
I'm not even aware of an alternative path to getting an audio book.
Answer: The "Overdrive" app. It lets you borrow audio books from your local library for free. It's great; I've been using it heavily for three years.