Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
Sony and Amazon have other diverse sources of income to play the price war game for a while.
I'm not sure if Sony does have the stomach for it-they just managed to get profitable on the PS3...having to go back in the red for another product line might be too much. I will be interested if they really commit again to the Japanese market.
Borders (Kobo) and Barnes and Noble? Looking at their market caps and revenue streams, it is hard to see how they can compete in a hardware price war at all, even if they make a pure razor/razorblade play with their content.
And the hardware device only guys? Pain.
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Seems Sony is getting hit with a double whammy this week because
rumor in the DSLR world is Sony is abandoning their line of full-frame (think 35mm film sized) sensor based cameras because they simply cannot compete with the Canikon's of the work (Canon & Nikon). Mind Sony makes sensors for their, as well as other brand, cameras.
Now the ereaders look to be too cutthroat for all but those with solid content sites to justify the lower margin on the hardware. If anyone doubts Sony's willingness to dump an existing and profitable division just research how they unceramoniously dump their PDA division almost overnight. See it was making money, just not enough money and they did not, apparently, see it as an area of potential growth....sooooo, off it went. Same now with the top of the line DSLR cameras so I don't doubt the ereader division is not on the block as well.
One thing Sony has never down well at is to compete on price...they have always been able to rely on the nice quality control they offered. But these days, I am not sold that Sony offers any QA/QC advantage....comparing the Sony readers to other brands leaves the Sony's wanting...the 300 is really one that does not instill confidence in it's durability, though I don't recall many people reporting problems, it is just that held side by side with my Kindle's and certainly compared to my nx73v PDA (Sony btw) the 300 feels like it is a "genuine Cony" rather than a genuine SONY made product...
Plus I am betting Sony is doing a lot better than others with their TV and other higher end products than they are with book readers. So, I see Sony as maybe giving it one last shot this fall but if we see just a big price drop on current models they could be done...and I mean a price drop that "feels" different from their previous history prior to new readers being released. A real shame because I like their devices, especially the 505 was a well done piece of hardware. But toss in their poor software support and the gap gets wider....
hmmmm, how funny would it be for Sony to go totally OPEN SOURCE on their readers? I suspect this is an area any device maker could do a lot with...that and, well, of course color! I have to wonder if that is where Amazon is vulnerable...but until there is a viable color panel option that Amazon does not have access to, I guess it's not a potential weakness.
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