Quote:
Originally Posted by Metal Mick
What is stopping this - is it a manpower thing, or licensing, or is Amazon guarding their Kindle hardware market? One thing is certain, if the Kindle app works on my Android phone, it will work on a tablet, essentially harming the Kindle hardware sales.
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What stops it is a licensing thing more than anything else. But economies of scale and market positioning also factor into it.
It is not so much Amazon guarding their hardware business, else why offer Kindle apps for smartphones, PCs, Macs, and (as you point out) android tablets (although those are currently more of a side-effect).
Amazon has made it clear that they *don't* see the Kindle apps running on alternate hardware as a threat: they are in the ebook business more than the eReader business. Their purpose in releasing Kindle was to speed up the mainstreaming of ebooks. (And make a bit of money on the side.) And a Kindle app running on non-Kindle hardware is as much a customer "win" for Amazon as a Kindle hardware sale.
Since they are a primarily a lean-and-mean retailer of dry goods (their primary competitor is WalMart, not Sony, nor B&N, or anybody else) they generally try to control their infrastructure and supply chain. This means they run their own e-commerce datacenters (sized up for peak holiday sales and then some) and own their own technology; in the build vs buy corporate debate they *always* go with build whenever feasible. For ebooks this means that, rather than pay royalties to Adobe for using DRM'ed ePub, they went out and *bought* Mobipocket and Audible. It also means that Kindle's *first* priority is to offer a pleasant and enticing *shopping* experience. That it be a good reader (which it is) is secondary to the selling of ebooks.
This is simply how Amazon has laid out their business. It's not a matter of good or evil or greedy giant corporation versus plucky startups, as some would choose to see it. It is simply them playing their game without paying much heed to would-be competitors unless forced to it. (Like B&N just did with their recent price cut.)
Now, Amazon has publicly stated that they would license their reader app for competing ebook readers *if* they agreed to support Whispernet. Which makes sense (for Amazon) as Whispernet is central to the Kindle shopping experience. Whether it makes sense for a would-be licensee is what is uncertain/undetermined/unlikely(?) especially since the Whispernet requirement makes Adobe Adept support contractually incompatible. Also, since it appears that the economics of ebook reader manufacture *today* are tilted heavily towards Amazon and B&N (NorthAm is reported to be as much as 80% of the world eink reader market, and Kindle & Nook together control about 70% of *that*) any Kindle-compatible reader would have to operate as a "premium" reader. And in a world with iPads and Android tablets that is a very narrow slice of the market to operate in; higher than Kindle but lower than the tablets? Tricky, tricky. We can speculate but until somebod tries it we won't know if it is economically viable.
Now, as to the Kindle 3 "hysteria", that is easier to explain on three fronts.
1- K3 (and the new KDX) are the first (and so far, only) products to hit the market with the next-gen "Pearl" eink screens that offer both darker text and lighter background for significantly better contrast, especially in dimmer lighting.
2- K3 WiFi is the cheapest connected ebook reader by far. And, unlike the Nook WiFi, it is readily available outside NorthAm. (100+ countries.) It is a world reader. And it is priced transparently, world-wide. So the US$139 comes out to 109 pounds in the UK and 150 euros on the continent. These last two prices are *substantialy* lower than competing connected readers.
3- Where Kindle goes, goes the Amazon ebookstore. They not only sell readers, they sell ebooks worldwide (subject to publisher geo-restrictions). And, to add to the fun, in reaction to the Price-Fix Five's recent switch to non-competitive ebook pricing, Amazon has stepped up their already substantial in-house *publishing* operation, offering up up to a 70% royalty to authors willing to abide by Amazon's reader-friendly policies (TTS-allowed, no geo-restrictions, prices in the US$2.99-9.99 range, etc).
Add these three up and I think the reason for hysteria becomes clear, no?
You have the market leader in the largest reader market offering up the best ebook shopping experience on the best available screen at the lowest prices.
Given that way too many ebook readers now on the market offer up minimalist reader experiences (minimal typographical controls, PC app-dependent file management, unstable firmware, minimal post-sale support, etc) at substantially higher prices than Nook and Kindle it is clear that the competitive landscape has dramatically changed over the last two months.
We're already seeing competitors fall by the wayside almost weekly; Cool-er, iRex, Que, and most recently Foxit. The blood-letting started after Nook WiFi came in at US$149 but since Nook is (so far) US-only, many simply sniffed that that "was just the US" and it meant nothing to the rest of the world. With Kindle readers and ebooks available worldwide, that particullar excuse won't fly anymore. Competitors now have to justify their product in terms of its quality and qualities against the K3 WiFi benchmark.
This is hardly impossible. (We in this forum can name a couple of solid alternatives.
) But it requires competence and agility; the days of a regional player simply rebadging a generic chinese reader running generic Adobe reader software and making a living shipping 25000 units a year are coming to an end. (Hence the vanishing readers.)
The industry is headed for a phase of consolidation over the next year and odds are most of the third-tier minor players are going to be getting into generic Android LCD tablets instead of generic eink readers.
This will clear the terrain for the non-generic eink readers to stand out *if* (big if) they take advantage of the opportunity. Interesting times are here.