Quote:
Originally Posted by afv011
I doubt anybody can say they are surprised, BN were once ahead of the curve but didn't push forward while they enjoyed that advantage, and they've now fallen way behind everybody else. It's a shame for the people that lost their jobs, but the writing was on the wall.
|
When was BN ahead of the curve?
The color, touch screen window went away pretty fast. Probably because it was as unnecessary as it sounded.
It got the glolight out first but Kobo had something similar out fast and Amazon was not too far behind. Sony had tried something similar a few years earlier but it didn't work. So not exactly cutting edge and something that clearly Kobo and Amazon were working on at the same time.
There was the Nook Color/Tablet which was ok but not strong enough to compete with a real tablet. It took Amazon a while to follow up with the Fire but at least that was a full scale tablet that could challenge the other tablets and iPad.
Amazon had an SD card in the K1 but got rid of it because it proved to be problematic and people seemed to be fine without it. BN kept the SD card which made a small percentage of e-reader users happy.
I can see the tablet as being ahead of the curve but without enough vision to make it actually work. Or maybe it was without enough marketing. Probably a combination of the two. It wasn't powerful enough to compete with the other tablets on the mrket when it was released and wasn't marketed so people didn't know that it was an option.
The rest, some gimics that didn't really take hold (color touch screen), a bit ahead of the others but not exactly cutting edge (glolight), and things that were nice but had been dropped by Amazon (SD Card).
BN's big problem was that its bookstore was always a step behind Amazon, its customer service was a notch or two behind Amazon, it was a US based machine only, and it had very limited marketing.
Amazon had the Kindle on the front page of its website for how long? Heck, it is still there on a regular basis. It ran ads on a regular basis and has not copied the PC/MAC commercial format with the Fire/iPad.
Essentially, BN entered the market late and did little to nothing to actually challenge Amazon with the masses. Yes, they challenged Amazon on this board but that is because people here know about DRM, EPub vs Mobi, and have enough books to want an SD card slot. The average Joe doesn't know about DRM, doesn't know about EPub vs Mobi, and doesn't have enough books to care about an SD slot.
BN made no real effort to challenge Amazon internationally, were they could have had some success because the international market was more EPub centric and would have embraced an e-reader that was less expensive then a Sony and read EPubs. The Nook existed before the Kobo but was beat by the Kobo outside the US because the Nook was not an international device. BN just went international at the end of last year as they were shutting down the tablets and it was clear that they had no chance in hell of competing in the US. That is a good 4-5 years after Amazon went international and 3 years or so after Kobo really got into the game.