Apple 'wanted its ebook prices to be lowest On the second day of a trial which pits the technology giant against the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Apple said it was "indifferent" to what model of pricing rivals such as Amazon used. The DoJ has accused Apple of "knowingly and intentionally" corralling five publishers to raise the price of ebooks from the $9.99 (£6.52) Amazon had established as standard, and to force Amazon to follow suit by withholding key titles if it refused to comply. Its case centres on the "agency model" of pricing, whereby Apple allowed publishers to dictate the price of ebooks, as long as it could take 30pc of the sales. The iPhone and iPad maker's contracts with publishers stipulated that no other retailer would be allowed to undercut it. On Tuesday, Kevin Saul, a lawyer who has worked for Apple for 17 years and was instrumental in drafting the agreement, said Apple did not care how publishers ensured that happened. "It was all about Apple and our ability to launch a bookstore that was the greatest bookstore on the planet," he said. We needed to compete with the lowest retail price out there. Apple's contracts with publishers did not instruct them to sign rival retailers up to the agency model, but executives suggested they should force Amazon's hand by holding back highly anticipated titles. The Department of Justice claims that Apple colluded with publishers - Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette - to raise the price of ebooks so that it could release the stranglehold that Amazon had established on the market. Apple has tried to paint a picture of itself as a consumer champion, which injected choice and competition into a virtual monopoly. However, it will spend the next three weeks battling against a mountain of evidence which suggests that the six companies were acting in concert. All five publishers settled the case before it went to trial, leaving Apple to fight it out with the DoJ alone, at a federal court in Manhattan.