{"id":23929,"date":"2012-10-10T09:32:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T07:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=23929"},"modified":"2012-10-10T15:23:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T13:23:28","slug":"apple-e-book-case-settled-in-a-couple-of-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/23929\/apple-e-book-case-settled-in-a-couple-of-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple e-book case settled “in a couple of months”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc<\/a>‘s antitrust case with the European Union<\/a> over e-book publishing could be settled in a couple of months, European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Almunia, the EU’s antitrust chief, said he hoped to resolve soon an investigation into Apple and four publishers over deals setting e-book prices.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully in the coming couple of months, we will reach a settlement,” Almunia told a British Chamber of Commerce conference.<\/p>\n

The European Commission is now market-testing an offer by Apple and the publishers in a bid to end the EU probe. The four are CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster, News Corp unit HarperCollins, French group Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Livre, and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan in Germany.<\/p>\n

A fifth publisher, Pearson’s Penguin, was also charged in the investigation, but is not participating in the settlement with the commission, which began its inquiry last December.<\/p>\n

“For a period of two years, the four publishers will not restrict, limit or impede e-book retailers’ ability to set, alter or reduce retail prices for e-books and\/or to offer discounts or promotions,” the European Commission said in its Official Journal, detailing the offer under consideration.<\/p>\n

HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette reached a settlement with the U.S. government in April with similar proposals.<\/p>\n

According to analysts at UBS, e-books account for about 30 percent of the U.S. book market and 20 percent of sales in Britain, but are still negligible elsewhere.<\/p>\n

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Apple stocks soar on iPhone 5 hype<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

iPhone 5 orders pushed back<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Apple snubs NFC in iPhone 5<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Apple planning aggressive iPhone 5 launch<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple Inc’s antitrust case with the European Union over e-book publishing could be settled in a couple of months, European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,793,51,2307],"class_list":["post-23929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-active","tag-antitrust","tag-apple","tag-e-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23929"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24011,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929\/revisions\/24011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}