In  2010, Apple made its big entry into the e-book marketplace, which had been dominated by Amazon and its Kindle reader. At the time, book publishers were frustrated with Amazon’s low prices and welcomed the new retailer with open arms. After all, Apple was willing to let them set their own prices with the condition of taking a cut from each sale. The problem with this was that the terms Apple had offered big publishers allowed them to engage in a price-fixing conspiracy. Some publishers involved in the conspiracy included Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. Under this deal some e-book prices rose from $9.99 to up to $14.99. 

In July 2013, US District Court Judge Denise Cote found Apple guilty of conspiring to raise the retail price of e-books and scheduled a trial for 2014 to determine damages. The court stated that  Apple broke antitrust laws when it entered the e-book market. Apple claimed that they had simply been promoting competition in a very monopolistic market. The court disagreed by stating, “Competition is not served by permitting a market entrant to eliminate price competition as a condition of entry, and it is cold comfort to consumers that they gained a new e-book retailer at the expense of passing control over all e-book prices to a cartel of book publishers.” In June 2014, the court issued a $450 million settlement, which Apple only agreed to pay if they lost the case in an appellate court. However, in 2015 The US supreme court decided not to hear Apple’s appeal, putting the settlement into effect. Furthermore, affected e-book buyers received $400 million in cash and credits.