Apple was found guilty yesterday in the US on conspiracy to influence pricing of eBooks. This is one of the black marks on the legacy of the late Steve Jobs, however Apple will appeal the verdict as given by Attorney General of New York.
In trying to assist publishers in creating additional revenue streams from eBooks, Apple has negatively impacted their own brand credibility. They could simply have settled the matter outside of court and this whole court case would never have seen the light of day.
The damage regarding privacy is primarily all the information Apple had to make public to try and build a defence against the anti-competitive charges that Apple faced against them. Contracts, business revenues and plenty of sensitive information that would never have gotten into the public space is now open to be seen by competitors.
The monetary damage is at the moment an unknown and it will only be seen in future quarterly results that Apple will release. eBooks is definitely an industry growing at a rate of knots but this court case will have lasting effects across the globe. Did Steve Jobs consider that the decision to help publishers battle competitors would end up with a court case?
