Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
Still, it would be interesting to hear how my concerns are unjustified.
Luck;
Ken
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They may not be unjustified.
But I think too many people are making too many assumptions about Amazon's "market domination". (Last year all the talk was about how Amazon was going to usurp control of the publishing industry from the BPHs. Don't hear much about that after the Price-Fix Five made their move, do we?)
Six months ago, Nook was nothing; a me-too product few could get their hands on, getting mediocre-to-poor reviews. Today B&N has Amazon *reacting* to *their* product introduction. Next week? Who knows?
I think it is very early in the mainstreaming of ebooks.
Amazon has the first-mover advantage (thanks to Oprah) that everybody looks to their product as a benchmark and assumes that they will continue to lead. History says they are as likely to fade (Palm Pilots, Apple II, IBM PC, Mosaic, Lotus, Word Perfect, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Aldus, Ventura, etc...) as they are to prosper.
I also think that ebook reading is, ultimately, a feature and *not* a product. That is in line with *both* the multi-function gadget crowd (iPxx supporters, particularly) and the optimized device supporters. In my view one size does not fit all and there is room for reading ebooks both on low-cost optimized devices (whether eink or LCD is for the market to decide, not me) as well as premium reading devices like Kindle, Nook, Sony 900, and Kindle DX and the Entourage. Again, I want to see the market make its choices, not governments, standards bodies, or mobs with torches and pitchforks.
I want Amazon to make the best Kindle they can conceive as much as I want Pocketbook to make the best readers *they* can. If it means the iCoolers and iRexes of the world have to fold, so be it. Because if the market is big enough to matter, new players (ahem; Apple, Samsung, Asus, etc) will want a piece of the pie.
I'm not ready to ascribe monopoly status to anybody until they actually acquire a proven monopoly. And *then* I'll worry about whether it is good or not. To date, the only barriers to entry Amazon has erected in ebooks are by making their product better in some ways. (It is also inferior in others, which means there is room for competitors that understand user needs and can execute.) Their pricing has hardly been predatory if, as reported the Kindle that used to sell for as much as $359 at introduction cost $189 to build. 100% markup--very Apple-ish, actually--is hardly low-balling anything.
From my point of view, Amazon's only demonstrable "crime" is refusing to roll over and play dead for Adobe. (Which Apple also refused to do. Funny how little noise there is over them "splintering" the ePub market.) In my view, lock-in to Adobe DRM (or Apple's) is no different than lock-in to Amazon's. Except Amazon DRM is supported on more devices of more different types than anybody else.
Now all this is just *me*.
I favor Darwinian product competition; variation, speciation, survival of the fittest...
I favor equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.
I want products (and people and nations) to be the best they can be and I see no reason to artificially hamstring them to favor those unwilling or incapable of keeping up.
I don't fear the future; rather I'm a big fan of sitting back and waiting to see what happens before worrying about disasters to come.
Again, that's just me.
Others can feel different.
Sooner or later we'll see how it plays out.
Maybe in two years the ebook reader market will be Amazon and the seven dwarves. Or maybe in two years Amazon will be out of the reader hardware business altogether. It can be (and has been) plausibly argued either way.
All we know for sure is that tomorrow's ebook reader will look nothing like today's.
I'd prefer it if we could give these companies---all of them, big and small---room and incentive to go and build the best products they can. And then we can vote with our pocketbooks. (Ahem.) Make that wallets.
Let them win or lose in the marketplace on their own merits.
Fair'nough?
$0.02