I actually think that what Apple has done with O2 should be made illegal across the EU and that they should be fined. The French competition agency ruled the Orange-Apple exclusive deal anti-competitive and illegal back in 2008, and the Germans made a similar decision in 2007. The EU needs to stamp out this practice, and soon.
The second piece of news that I noticed this morning, was a story about a criminal gang that published their own songs, but then bought them via iTunes (and Amazon) with stolen credit cards. Notably, the gang made $300,000 from the royalties on $750,000 of sales.
If you do the math, that's a 40% return for the gang. The real crime is that Amazon and Apple earn the other 60%. Previous estimates have suggested that Apple's iTunes profit margin is around 30%. Have I missed something here, or are these two figures vastly different?
So in summary, the British authorities do not see a problem with Apple and a mobile operator openly colluding to restrict competition and fix prices and Apple are taking a rather nice cut on iTunes sales, passing 40% to the producers.

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