Apple Lowers Price of iTunes in U.K.
01.09.08 - 01:59pm
After numerous allegation against Apple, fines and upcoming lawsuits Apple has chosen to reduce the price of music downloads in the U.K. bringing an end to the European Commissions anti-trust investigation against Apple.
The U.K. was one of the few left out of standardized pricing that Apple had already set in Europe as a result of complaints from people traveling from country to country and getting different pricing wherever they went. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain currently have unified iTunes pricing. The U.K. however still had a .10 cent higher price per song, due to their use of the pound rather then the euro.
“This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.”
Apple, however, is not set on taking the brunt of higher costs and lower prices in the U.K. and sent out a warning to all the major record labels saying, “Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the U.K. with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the U.K. to the pan-European level within six months.”
The European Commission will not be taking any action against the record companies if they don’t lower their pricing to match saying, “Our understanding is that the record companies that don’t apply pan-European pricing [for their music] do so respecting copyright policy, and that is not an antitrust violation.”
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