Why iPods are never on sale

The graphic with this post is a scree hot I captured while browsing Amazon's 'Year End Deals' section. Boy, they have a great deal on the 80 gig iPod, don't they? You save 99 cents! And de ite my sarcasm, that actually is probably one of the best deal you're going to find on iPods this holiday season.

Why don't retailers price iPods more aggre ively? I mean, iPods are pretty much the same price no matter where you get them, so there is very little reason to shop around for them (and stores want you to shop around).

Sean Cooper, writing for Slate, gets to the bottom of this mystery and finds that the a wer is: MAP (minimum advertised price). This is a price which is set by A le and if a vendor complies with this price they get some money to advertise their iPod wares from A le. However, if they go below that price they can ki that money goodbye. Why would A le do this? Well, you might recall that A le makes a good deal of money selling its own wares in the A le stores. Imagine if a big box store (Best Buy or Circuit City) could undercut A le's price. Everyone would be buying iPods from them and no one would be sho ing at those nice A le stores.