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Originally Posted by Care
75%. I never would have thought that. Is that in the US? Because I don't even know one single person in real life (here in Canada) that has a Kindle. Most people have Sonys or Kobos. I even know people with Nooks. I am not saying it's not true, I am just shocked that it could be that high.
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Why? I would guess that most Americans had not really heard of many of the early e-readers. The first major e-reader was the Sony. Sony's have always been priced pretty high and the Sony bookstore was seriously lacking for many years. So the Sony was not economically feasible and the availability of books was limited.
The K1 was out long before the Nook. I believe that the K2 was out before the Nook. Amazon got a nice jump on everyone with its bookstore. With Oprah naming the Kindle one of her favorite things and providing a $50 off coupon, Kindle sales took off. Then the K2 was released and the price was dropped. The K2 sold out pretty quickly. Soon after the Kindle Apps started being released.
So before the Kindle there were EPub readers that only a small percentage of the population knew about and that were really expensive. When Amazon entered the market they brought a small, but larger then the competition and growing, ebook store. The price drop and availability of Apps made the Kindle itself more inticing and the books available to people who did not have a Kindle.
Nook entered the picture late in the game and the Barnes and Noble book store was not as good as Amazons. Essentially, Amazon hit the market second but was the first heavily marketed and pushed ereader. Amazon made its books available to non Kindle owners before others did. So Amazon benefited with a larger share of the US market.
The international Kindle is going to change the numbers of Mobi vs EPub offerings in a short amount of time.
I don't think Amazon got to where it is in the ebook and ereader arena because its product is vastly superior to other products. I think Amazon got there by taking advantage of a gap, marketing the hell out of its product, and releasing new ways of using its product before others did.