Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN): EU may end anti-trust probe on prices of e-books

Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) looks set to get a victory on an issue related to the pricing of its e-books in the European Union, after competition regulators in the EU prepare to end an anti-trust probe into e-book prices, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

The report said that the EU had decided to accept an offer by Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) and four publishers to ease price restrictions on Amazon.

This is good news for the online retailer in its attempts to sell e-books at a cheaper price ran its rivals. Digital books are a rapidly growing segment and without the costs of publishing associated with it, it makes books more affordable to readers.

"Faced with years of court battles and uncertainty I can understand why some of these guys decided to fold their cards and take the whipping," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, an eBook publisher and distributor that works with Apple, told Reuters.

A spokesman at the EU Commission said its investigation was not yet finished, while Amazon and Apple declined to comment Reuters said.

Companies like Apple and some publishers entered into deals with retailers which prevented some other publishers from selling books at price cheaper than Apple.

"The agreements, which critics say prevent Amazon and other retailers from undercutting Apple's charges, sparked an investigation by the European Commission in December last year," Reuters said.

According to the Reuters report, "The EU antitrust authority, which in September asked for feedback from rivals and consumers about the proposal, has not asked for more concessions, said one of sources.

"The Commission is likely to accept the offer and announce its decision next month," the source said on Tuesday.

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Amazon Prime offers monthly subscription services, To Compete With Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)

Online retailer Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) had upped the competition against established rival Netflix, Inc.(NASDAQ:NFLX) in video streaming services.

Is NFLX a Buy After The Recent Up Move? Find Out Here

The company, which offers its video services under Amazon Prime, said on Tuesday it had started offering some users membership for its subscription-based shipping and video streaming service for a monthly fee.

The monthly fee that it is charging at $7.99 is on par with what Netflix charges its subscribers for its online video movies and television shows.

The yearly membership at $79 is still available for members.

The Wall Street Journal said that the monthly offer fee came at right at the start of the crucial holiday selling season, when consumers are more inclined to look for short-term entertainment channels.

Amazon does not have the kind of library-size that Netflix possesses but has been rapidly ramping up its content-base.

In September it entered into a content acquisition deal with cable channel EPIX for the rights to popular releases such as 'The Avengers' 'Iron Man 2' and 'The Hunger Games'.

The company has said that it now had a library of over 25,000 titles and it looking to add more.

Video streaming services are popular, especially with those who look for entertainment on mobile devices such as laptops and tablet PCs. However it is highly price sensitive segment, as Netflix found out to its cost when it raised prices last year and found that a lot of its customers fleeing from its services.

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Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon (AMZN) to be grilled for not paying sufficient taxes

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) are set to feel the heat from a parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom over payment of taxes lower than what they were liable for.

A report by Reuters said that UK's public Accounts Committee had asked senior officials of the companies to make a deposition on November 5.

The Internet giants have been criticised in recent months for making substantial sales in the country but paying only a small amount in taxes, sometimes as little as 1.5 percent on hundreds of millions of pounds of earnings, Macworld reported.

According to the report, Google had paid about 8 million pounds in corporation taxes in the U.K. in the six years through 2010. Online retailer Amazon is "asking its publishers to pay a full 20 percent of VAT on eBook sales in the UK - even though it only has to pay 3 percent to the Exchequer because it is based in Luxembourg," it said.

Exchequer secretary David Gauke recently said in the House of Commons that the country's eBook market was valued at 140 million pounds in 2011, but he admitted that the Treasury had no idea about how much tax was being paid by the companies concerned on these sales.

Gauke said: "A large proportion of this business is supplied from abroad. Therefore, no reliable estimate has been possible for the value of VAT levied on the sale of e-books purchased in the UK."

Recently auction site eBay had also come under scrutiny as it had been paying only 0.15 percent of tax on sales worth some $798 million in the country in 2010, the report said.

If the company had followed standard corporation tax guidelines, it would have had to pay $51 million in taxes instead of the $1.2 million that it did pay.

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Apple Inc. (AAPL) tablets lose market share in the third quarter

Sales of tablet PCs rose nearly 50 percent in the third quarter of 2012 from a year earlier to 27.8 million units, according to data released by International Data Corporation. The sequential growth in sales of these devices was 6.7 percent.

Predictably, the sales growth was led by Android devices, running on Samsung and Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) handsets. Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) devices actually saw a dip in market share during the quarter, the data showed.

Apple saw its share skipping to 50.4 percent in the third quarter compared to the 65.5 percent it had at the end of the second quarter this year.

"After a very strong second quarter, Apple saw growth slow as both consumer and commercial (including education) shipments declined, and rumours of a forthcoming iPad Mini began to heat up," said Tom Mainelli, research director, Tablets at IDC.

"We believe a sizeable percentage of consumers interested in buying an Apple tablet sat out the third quarter in anticipation of an announcement about the new iPad Mini. Now that the new Mini, and a fourth-generation full-sized iPad, are both shipping we expect Apple to have a very good quarter. However, we believe the mini's relatively high $329 starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter."

However, during the third quarter, it was Apple's bitter rival Samsung which gained at Apple's expense.

Driven by its Galaxy Tab and Note 10.1., the Korean handset maker shipped 5.1 million tablets worldwide in the third quarter, more than double from the second quarter. That's an incredible four-fold increase from the third quarter of the previous year, when it had shipped 1.2 million tablets.

Amazon, which did not have a tablet in its portfolio last year, took a 9 percent market share in the third quarter with shipments of 2.5 million units. ASUS, which has tied up with Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG), saw its share rise to 8.6 percent from 3.8 percent, while Lenovo saw a marginal rise in its share.

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Cloud Drive App from Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Now on Android Devices

Good news for users of Android phones and tablets – using Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN Cloud Drive, they will be able to save thousands of photos in a 5GB storage capacity, free of cost. The Cloud Drive Photos for Android app was unveiled today by Amazon. The app makes uploading, sharing, and storing of photos much easier. Additional storage of 20 GB can also be bought at $10 for a year.

Russell Dicker, Director of Cloud Drive said more and more people are using mobile devices to take photos of occasions like birthdays, anniversaries or weddings, to capture the precious moments. The app is designed for such purposes, so that they can be automatically accessed via the Cloud Drive on Android phones or tablets.

The method for saving photos is also very easy – pressing and holding on an album will give the option for uploading to Cloud Drive. The best part is that Amazon has incorporated the same swift and consistent data storage infrastructure into the Cloud Drive, which is used in its global network of Web pages. Take a look at the features of Cloud Drive for Android:

·         All your photos stored in Cloud Drive can be accessed from any part of the world.

·        Photos can be selected right from the Drive and shared on social networking websites like Facebook or emailed to friends.

·         The layout of the Cloud is amazing – the photos can be viewed in a horizontal mosaic or vertical grid view, and will automatically be resized according to the screen of your device.

Users of Kindle Fire HD can also use Cloud Drive and due to its high-resolution screen, photos look spectacular and seem to come alive with the mosaic view arranging photos perfectly. The Kindle Fire can be used to check out favorite photos on TV as well via HDMI out. Simply connect an HDMI cable to the HDMI port directly from your Kindle Fire tablet and voila! Let the magic begin…

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Is Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) making money From Its tablets?

CEO, Jeff Bezos, on the event of the launch of the revamped Kindle series of tablets for the holiday season revealed, and relieved the doubts of many. The tablets are not very lucrative in terms of income and profits for the company. Since the tablets are sold at dirt cheap prices, the online store, Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) does really earn from the hardware. 

The company, upon good sales of the tablets, breaks even, since it sells the tablets at very cheap rates, which are very close to the cost of the making of the tablets. Ever since the launch of the Fire, the doubts about how much money Amazon can make out of selling the devices at such cheap rates, was being speculated upon, by many. Even if the company is not making money off the hardware, it is not like the company makes a lot of money out of the content which is bought through the hardware. In fact, the situation with the content is often worse.

Amazon, after the advent of the Department of Justice taking on the company, as well as Apple, for allegations of price fixing, has resorted back to pricing the goods they offer for sale, as they deem fit. They often end up selling e-books and such things below the required amount. This leads them to run big losses. They have often sold books which have been heavily discounted. Even in the cast of music, Lady Gaga’s “Born this way” was sold at 99 cents, only. Also the Prime customers enjoy a lot of benefits, which makes one wonder how Amazon ends up making their money.

The trick which the company employs is to keep their customers through the abnormally low prices. The customer is kept happy, and this brings about the true source of revenue. Advertisements keep coming up on the devices, and one has to pay a little extra to switch these adverts off. These adverts are sure to appeal to the customers, and more often than not, the customers end up opting for at least some of these adverts. The company makes sure that the customers stick around, because of their low prices and good products, and therefore, this ensures more sales through the adverts, for the advertisers. 

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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) sees Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) Compute as threat

Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Service has filed a lawsuit against a former company executive who plans to join Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG), charging him with violating a non-compete agreement which was part of his severance package.

The lawsuit filed by Amazon also said that the executive, Daniel Powers, was privy to the `secrets' of the company since he had learned the business "from top to bottom."

The threat to Amazon Web Services is perceived to be from Google Compute Engine, which was launched in June, and is part of its cloud services offering.

Geekwire first reported the news. According to the news - "Daniel Powers, an IBM veteran, joined AWS as VP of sales in 2010, learned the business “from top to bottom” and was privy to company trade secrets, according to the suit. In June, 2012 Amazon offered him a severance package in return for a signed non-compete agreement. This suit, filed in Washington State Superior Court, charged that Powers’ decision to join Google violates the terms of that pact, which required him to stay clear of directly competitive work for 18 months."

Google Compute Engine is being seen as a huge threat to Amazon, which is the biggest provider of public cloud infrastructure. In fat Amazon is already expecting more competition from Rackspace, HP and Microsoft, all of which are aggressively moving into cloud-based services.

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Sells Out All iPad Mini Units As Amazon (AMZN) Criticizes Its Price

As Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) sold out of its launch catalog of all iPad mini models, Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) made a direct attack on the new 7.9 inch tablet with a large advert on its front page mentioning that the Kindle Fire HD offers more features for much less money.

As the iPad mini was presented for preorder at Apple’s website all weekend, Amazon ran an advertisement on its front page contrasting the Kindle Fire HD to the iPad mini. It criticized Apple’s latest iPad mini as having a low-definition display with lesser pixels for every inch than its very own Kindle Fire HD.

Amazon also dismissed the fact that the iPad mini has a mono speaker while Kindle Fire HD comes with dual stereo speakers. Amazon’s tablet with a 216 pixel for each inch screen is priced at $199 while the iPad mini comes at the minimum price of $329.

Apart from a short comparison of the devices, Amazon’s front page also features a quote from Gizmodo calling Apple ‘ballsy’ for charging more for the iPad mini with a poorer resolution screen. Apple and Gizmodo has been in dispute since the website bought a sample iPhone 4 and disassembled it before the product was declared, while the site also covered the iPhone 4 ‘antenna gate’ hullabaloo.

Amazon also stated that the Kindle HD had its biggest day of sales on last Wednesday. It was the day after Apple declared the iPad mini and its $329 initial price. Sales of the Kindle Fire HD were three times what they were in the last week, the company told AllThingsD.

Amazon does not announce its sales information so it is not yet known exactly how many of the Kindle Fire HD it sold till date. However, the company has always said that the tablet is the best selling product on its whole store. 

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