Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) doesn’t become the largest and most valuable tech company in the world by having stupid people in charge. For those who might not think that Tim Cook is as clever, smart or shrewd as the late Steve Jobs, just might want to pay attention to the happenings in the company’s e-book price-fixing trial against the U.S. Department of Justice, which is in its first week this week.
In this scenario, Tim Cook just might be Sherlock Holmes and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos is his Professor Moriarty. How does Amazon.com figure into a case between the Department of Justice and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)? Now, that is the clever part.
The Department of Justice pinned things on Apple all along when the book publishers suddenly changed their pricing models so that Amazon.com did not automatically have the lowest prices on e-books – the publishers were in control of the prices, not the retailers. What was happening was something that is done in the book-publishing industry a lot. Sometimes retailers get to decide their prices, other times the publishers do.
Well in this trial, the U.S. Department of Justice made the five e-book publishers mentioned in the initial collusion to settle their cases, and they the DOJ has been sending each one to the stand to testify against Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), trying to paint Cupertino as the one who arranged for this collusion to take place, which sabotaged the pricing and volume advantage that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) had enjoyed in the e-book space. However, the government’s case, as strong as it seemed circumstantially, seemed to take a big hit when Amazon.com was called to testify.
So how does Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) fit in this, really?
What may likely come out at least during cross-examination, could be that this entire case stemmed from an Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) attorney getting in the ear of the DOJ about e-book publishers changing their pricing models, and the DOJ then asked for thousands of pages of information from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) compared to very few pages of information from Amazon.com in this case. What to watch for should be the highlight of the entire trial, when Apple lawyers cross-examine Amazon.com to get to the bottom of this entire case as Apple tries to establish the lack of merit in the case in the first place.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) might have been pretty clever in having a hand in this in the first place, but Tim Cook of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is showing himself to be just as capable as a leader by not taking a settlement and exposing this entire case at trial. Will Apple ultimately succeed? It is more likely now than it looked a few days ago, but Tim Cook at least knew that the strong move was to fight the case because of how it was established. Will this make the publishing houses look the fool for settling out of court? Possible. But then what? What are your thoughts about this? Let us know in the comments section below.
DISCLOSURE: None
