Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
I am very wary of Amazon and their attempt to crush competition and become an unbridled e-book monopoly. We have seen what they did to Mobipocket.
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Uh, I'm as wary of Amazon as anybody (I didn't get a Kindle--a refurb--until I was sure I could strip the DRM of anything I bought from them. Haven't had to but I'm comfortable knowing I could if I had to) but lets be realistic; they are *not* actively trying to crush competition.
If they *wanted* to crush competition the K2 would *not* have come to market with 100% markup.
If they *wanted* to crush competition they wouldn't have waited until Nook forced their hand to go to $189.
If they wanted to crush competition they would be supporting ePub--with propietary DRM instead of ADEPT.
There are lots of cheap easy ways Amazon could crush competition. They are doing one of them.
Rather, your line about the 1000 lb behemoths applies; they are competing against forces bigger than them, the BPHs, and competitors like Apple, B&N, and to a lesser extent (now) Sony. They are using their resources as necessary to achieve their goal and, let's be honest here; their goal is to transition the marketplace from 100% print books to 99% ebooks. (And make money along the way.
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Yes, it is good to be wary of market leaders. But let's not lose sight of the fact that nobody gets into business for their own health. Nor that in free and open markets there will inevitable be winners and losers. The alternative is protectionism and protectionism only serves entrenched powers, not newcomers, not consumers.
Amazon has played a good game but its been mostly clean: Anybody could've given Oprah Winfrey and ereader as a promotional move, but only Amazon thought of it. Anybody with an ebookstore could've done connected readers but Amazon happened to be the first. They are also the first to actually deliver a reader that harnesses the social networking aspects of reading through Facebook and twitter. The closest is Copia and they're still in beta with maybe 10 users while Amazon has been running with millions of users for three months.
What crimes has Amazon committed? Not rolling over and playing dead for Adobe? ePub is hardly *that* great and Adobe doesn't own it, not now that Apple broke up their attempt to hijack the "standard". Lets not forget that committee standards have a long record of losing out in the real world. (Otherwise the internet would be buit on GOSIP not TCP/IP. And SGML would rule the print world.
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Kindles are not for everybody not every use. There is room for cometitors but blind nay-saying (like Sony, below) helps nobody.
Competitors compete.
Losers go home to whine/whinge.
When it comes to the current ebook pricing reset, the onus is upon Amazon's competitors to be better and prove it. (Sony, for one, thinks a press release is an adequate answer to the K3:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/30/s...kindle-intend/).
Hopefully Pocketbook Global has something better to fight back with.
First thing that comes to mind is that the Adobe ADEPT cult needs to get its act in gear; if Adobe ePub is really that hot, prove it. Get the word out. Get a trademark. Publicize it. Educate would-be buyers.
90% of the reading public in the US has yet to buy a reader (if we believe the analyst types) so there clearly is time to compete. But network effects aren't limited to online communities, there is such a thing as critical mass for platforms where the tyranny of the installed base sets in. We're not there yet, in eink readers, but its a lot closer than it appeared even a few months ago.
The weakness of the Kindle alternatives isn't in the readers, it's in the mishandling of the ePub would-be industry standard. And I'm starting to wonder if Pocketbook Global maybe ought to look into the numbers and see what might happen if they took Bezos at his word about licensing azw/whispernet compatibility.
A PB360 that can access the Kindle store? Hmmm... Maybe instead of fighting we could be joining them? Now *that's* an evil thought.
