On Friday, US District Judge Denise Cote said she is contemplating the imposition of hefty restrictions on Apple Inc. Her conclusion was due to findings that the tech giant illegally conspired with publishers to raise the prices of electronic books.
"My focus is on making sure we don't have collusive illegal activity again interfering with the e-books market," Cote stated. The US judge said she was weighing if she would restrict Apple from making contracts with publishers for five years. However, she noted that she would not require the Cupertino, California-based company to hire a court-appointed external monitor.
In April 2012, the Justice Department sued Apple, claiming it conspired with the leading publishers to undercut Amazon.com Inc's prevalent e-book pricing. The government contended that e-books' price rose to US$12.99 or US$14.99 from only US$9.99. In July this year, Cote required the publishers to pay US$166 million to benefit the customers of the industry.
Last July 2011, Apple generated US$292 million in profit from around 15 billion downloads in the app store. Apple's app store sells games, applications, e-books, music and movies. Consequently, in May 2013, Apple reported that the company reached its 50 billion download mark, allowing it to earn US$1.55 billion.
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