Quote:
Originally Posted by OrcaBlue
I think the reason is that when the ereader business just started, it was just a snitch sector. There was very few people interested in them. It's the earlier adopters like people on MR and earlier manufacturers like Sony and IREX that slowly build the market. No one know that ereader business would grow to where it is today. Hence, Sony decided that it would concentrate on other sectors like PS3, LCD TV, Digital Camera, VAIO Laptop, MP3 players, and Camcorder.
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The reason the ereader business started was because the leaders at the time had a dramatic vision: electronic delivery and presentation of digital texts creating a new industry out of an existing business ecosystem that supplied texts only on paper. They saw what happened with music and video and noticed books were still analogue. What an opportunity!
It was, and it is. Sony showed real leadership and guts and created the 5" and 6" models (505, 300, 600) for broad worldwide distribution (the 700 and 900 series were never sold in Canada; were they sold outside of the US?). They created a credible Internationally accessible ebookstore a year before Amazon entered the market. At the (open air) Toronto Book Fair in 2008 they had an enormous booth showing off their device at a couple of dozen stations with well-trained demonstrators. This reached a core market of genuine book readers.
But sometime after Amazon arrived, and truly legitimized the ereader experience (building on Sony's momentum), Sony management paused. They had two huge battles on their hands: establishing Blu-ray as the new HD standard and ensuring PS3 maintained its market position. By contast, ereaders were small fry and management clearly pulled support. They coasted instead of leading. Let's face it: Kindle 1 was not a Sony killer.
Assuming the latest rumours are roughly on track, these are minor refreshes: it's too little, too late. The silence on larger format readers is also striking. And then there is Sony's disinterest in the mobile phone and computing markets (Blackberry, Android, iPhone, iPad); even the late arriving Kobo supports these environments.
Sony is expected to make a formal announcements at the end of the month. To stay competitive, they will need to do much more than these leaks imply.