“Testifying in the e-book antitrust trial last June, Apple’s senior vice president Eddy Cue estimated that in the 24 years he’s been signing up digital content for the company he’s negotiated not hundreds or thousands but tens of thousands of contracts,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“In the Bloomberg story that got so much play Wednesday — Apple Said to Plan New TV Box Amid Time Warner Cable Talks — Cue is back on stage in a scene with all the same dramatic elements,” P.E.D. reports. “This time Apple is reportedly trying to herd video producers and cable operators into an April deal that would allow the Apple TV set-top box to graduate from Steve Jobs’ little ‘hobby’ into a device worthy of the new treatment it’s getting on Apple’s online line store, a fifth product line right there alongside the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac.”
P.E.D. reports, “What gives Cue’s reappearance special poignancy at this juncture is that Apple — having fiercely resisted the inquiries of Michael Bromwich, an antitrust monitor who by his own admission wanted to ‘crawl into’ the company and interview all its board members and top executives, including Cue — just got an appellate court to rein the monitor in.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]