Quote:
Originally Posted by delphin
Indeed, and an incredibly keen grasp of the obvious . . .
Clearly now, Amazon has such a commanding lead that it's Amazon's 'game to win or loose', but what is equally obvious, is that only a few years ago when Sony had the ONLY eInk readers on the market, it was their 'game to loose' as well, and through stupidity and greed, they DID LOOSE.
Stupidity like thinking that letting your publishers charge 15 to 20 dollars for an eBook in the Sony-Store was actually a good thing, because not only could you share in their outrageous profits, but it would also make the high price of the Sony readers look more reasonable by way of comparison.
But now that Kobo and B&N are fairly closely matching Amazon on book prices, and have raised the bar by introducing Touch Readers at the same price as Amazon's Non-Touch Kindle, Amazon will have to respond by either low-balling their current Kindle, or introducing a Touch Kindle model.
Otherwise, like Sony, Amazon could wake up in a few years to find that the market has slipped away from them.  |
Obviously Sony is more of a hardware company than a bookstore. Therefore they didn't really have the same position in the market as Amazon and B&N. People wouldn't buy a Sony reader because they were keen on buying books from Sony. Yet people will buy their readers from Amazon and B&N just because they buy most their paper books there as well.
If Sony can't sell their readers in the US because the market is dominated by cross subsidized readers then perhaps they should just abandon the US market and concentrate on more attractive markets.