Uh, guys, if I may be so crass as to point out the thread is supposed to be about the release of new Kindle hardware not about library lending or epub support?
Got you attention?
Okay, as somebody who owns both a Kindle and two Adobe ePub readers, I don't *care* about ePub or Mobi.
I do care about a healthy, *competitive* ebook reader industry so when I get around to buying my next reader I'll actually have a *choice*.
So riddle me this oh wise pontificators: how does it help *anybody* if Amazon, which controls 50% or more of the US reader market, which in itself consists of 60-70% of the world market (and China is 21%, btw); how does it help anybody if Amazon squeezes out the remaining hardware competitors by enabling ePub on Kindle?
Right now, folks more interested in library book access buy ePub based readers. Id Amazon matches this there is one less reason to buy a competing product. Some of those products don't have much market share to spare anyway; take away even a fraction and they'll be history. This is supposed to be good for *us*?
Right now, folks interested in non-english commercial ebooks are best served by regional ebookstores huddling under the adobe DRM umbrella. Many have ties to locally supplied, rebadged generic readers that are already going to have a hard time competing with an ePub-free Kindle. Let kindle loose under the umbrella and they'll be decimated the world over. This is good for whom?
I'm not looking to start a fight or anything but right now we have the makings of a decently balanced market between Amazon lock-in on one side and Adobe lock-in on the other. As long as B&N doesn't screw up, nobody will end up with monopoly power, competition between the camps will flourish and we tthe buyers will have a choice.
To me the whole format debate is about insecure people who want *their* personal preferences *validated* and not about any rational merit behind either format. One size does *not* fit all. We are *never* going to have a universal ebook format just we do not have a universal digital music format. This is *good*.
No, it is *great*.
We as consumers need choices we can make ourselves.
Wishing Amazon were even more formidable than they already are?
Do you really want a monopoly?
I don't.
The new Kindles (the topic of the thread) are going to put tremendous pressure on the second tier vendors. Some have already been squeezed out of North America. The UK looks to be next now that new WiFi K3s are cheaper than most *used* readers in the UK. (There's an active thread elsewhere on this.)
Next up is Japan; the new kindles support cyrillic and Japanese text.
(Now we know why Sony is trying to bring their readers back into the japanese market.)
Amazon is purposefully ignoring a sector of the market. It is *their* choice. It is a quiet truism of business that some customers aren't worth having. Amazon is clearly stating that *at this time* they have no interest in selling readers to people who are not interested in buying ebooks from them. Not if they can help it. Because each Kindle bought by a library reader is one Kindle that may not be available to a paying customer.
The fact that Amazon is avoiding this market has *helped* their competition. Sony is trying to ride libraries into relevance. Take this "advantage" away and Sony fades even more. If Amazon wanted to kill their competitors regardless of the harm to their business it would be trivially easy for them to enable Mobi-timed DRM (and only timed-DRM) on Kindle. They own Mobi, after all. Thankfully, they choose not to.
Amazon already controls a quarter to a third of the world-wide eink reader market. And you guys want them to be even *more* aggressive?
Dudes!
Why?!
Oh, never mind; I'm out of here. I need to go mow the lawn...
(Too bad I found no takers for the adoption ploy.)
