News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

January 31, 2008

rivals

Amazon acquires Audible for $300 million

Posted Jan. 31, ’08, 10:57 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Apple » Rivals

Amazon & AudibleIn the “unrelated to Apple but might affect them eventually” news headlines today, Amazon has bought Audible, the most prominent player in the digital audiobook market. The acquisition cost them a total of $300 million and the deal will be finalized by spring this year, pending government approval.

It certainly doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Amazon will likely tie Audible in to their Kindle e-book reader in due course, providing an iPod/iTunes Store sort of relationship. That’s the part that is logically clear.

The ambiguity, however, lies in what this could mean for the future of the iTunes Store, since the entire audiobooks section of the iTunes Store is powered by Audible. It’s possible that this relationship will not change and the iTunes Store will be unaffected by Amazon’s latest acquisition.

But then, it’s also possible that Amazon might sever the connection in an attempt to keep Apple at arm’s length from the e-book market so that they cannot pose any challenge to Kindle. If I were them and I didn’t particularly like Apple, I know I would want to do it.

What say you, beloved readers?

[The interesting question to me is what this means, if anything, for Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store. I find it unlikely somehow that Amazon will ditch DRM on the audiobook downloads—at the very least, it would require negotiations with the publishing companies. Unlike Amazon MP3, Audible currently runs as a subscription service; it’ll be interesting to see how, if at all, Amazon integrates those two offerings. - DM]


4 Comments

Brian said:

This is exactly the kind of question that will make completing the transaction difficult for Amazon. One of the key questions asked by antitrust regulators (DOJ, FTC, others) in the US is if the benefits of the merger could be attained without the merger (for example, through a joint venture or other contractual arrangement). Because Apple has clearly demonstrated that making audiobooks available without acquisition is possible - and because Amazon has also shown that selling without owning is a viable model for certain products - it will be particularly hard for Amazon to argue otherwise. And this doesn't consider the even more fundamental question asked by antitrust regulators: From the perspective of potential consumers, will the transaction harm competition? I think the deal will be completed, but I think the agencies will look very closely at post-merger plans for the Apple contract.

January 31, 2008 12:33 PM
BobK Author Profile Page said:

Emusic offers audiobooks without DRM. Granted the selection is not as great as Audible but the convenience of not having to worry about DRM makes the choice easy for me at least.

January 31, 2008 3:00 PM
mrfearless47 Author Profile Page said:

Crap. I've got a subscription to Audible that lets me download books more cheaply than iTunes does. How does this change my subscription and will I have to pay Apple's extortion prices for audioboks. The only value-added service Apple offers is chunking the books into smaller pieces. With the current generation of iPods, this hardly matters.

January 31, 2008 3:31 PM
Kate the M Author Profile Page said:

I've had an Audible.com account for a few years now, where for a flat fee per month, you're entitled to 2 credits that you can use on any audiobook they offer (and most books only need 1 credit). However, these credits obviously don't apply to audiobooks purchased through iTunes. The content on the two sites is also different: the iTunes Store has had the Harry Potter audiobooks for a while now, but Audible.com still doesn't offer them via their website. iTunes has one version of The Nanny Diaries; Audible.com has another, and so on. I wonder what this proposed deal will mean for both the Audible.com memberships, and the difference in content between them and iTunes.

January 31, 2008 3:47 PM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: