Quote:
Originally Posted by Bremen Cole
@DMcCunney
I forgot about the new Android Kindle app.... when the waves of Android tablets hit over the next several months, Amazon is already there and ready to sell. Sony could have done it like Amazon has, but instead Sony is drying up and will soon blow away..... Amazon deserves their success, that are working to get the business!
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We'll see. There was a lot of discussion back when Amazon introduced the Kindle and Sony was pushing early versions of the reader, about who would still be standing when the dust settled. Part of the concern was that Sony had previously demonstrated an on-again/off-again attitude. Sony used to be a major competitor in the PDA market, competing with devices from Palm, Handspring, and others with their Clie line of Palm OS PDAs. Sony folded the Clie line - it was profitable, but not profitable
enough, and Sony senior management decided they could make more money investing their funds elsewhere, so there was some question about whether the ebook reader market was large enough for them to profitably address, and Sony's determination to stay in the market.
The problem is that Sony is a consumer electronics manufacturer. For them, it's about the devices. Amazon and B&N are retailers. For them, it's about the
books. Amazon has enough penetration now with the Kindle Reader for the PC, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, that if they never sold another actual Kindle, I'm not sure the result would be visible on their bottom line. The Nook uses Android under the hood, so I wouldn't be at all surprised about a B&N reader app for something like the Motorola Droid. They want to sell us ebooks, and they'd be foolish to restrict that to only dedicated devices they made.
Sony made a wise decision in shifting to support ePub as their primary format instead of their previous proprietary format, broadening the choices available to users. They were no longer locked into the Sony Store as a source of commercial titles.
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Dennis