Quote:
Originally posted by pika
You're telling me there's only ONE water company in America?  That's sort of an inaccurate example because nothing is considered a monopoly then.
Of course iTunes isn't punching everyone out of business, but they're pretty close to it. If they make up for 95% of downloads that count towards the charts, while other sites piled together can only make up 5%, it can be considered a monopoly. This is discussion is pathetic though since we're all just fighting over the definition of a word.  |
The water company is considered a natural monopoly when we consider residents of a certain neighborhood:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Amazon's lowering of their mp3 prices is a sign of competition, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a monopoly, which involves the lack of competition.
Also, this situation exhibits none/a negligible amount of the characteristics of monopoly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
Quote:
Originally posted by Dephira
Monopoly = A company has enough market power to charge high prices. iTunes is selling the same exact product as Amazon, the second-biggest competitor, at a 30 cent surcharge, therefore they are a monopoly.
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In this particular case, I'd say that there is competition, and Amazon is using these songs as a loss leader. It's a method to promote their mp3 selling services.
And consider this: the Barnes and Noble sells some books for significantly more than the same books on Amazon, but we wouldn't consider Barnes and Noble to be a monopoly on books.
