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dhbailey · 01-05-2008, 08:05 AM

I don't take your post as an insult, and it certainly does have the weight of history behind it. Your points are unarguable, most of them.

But your comment on Bezos and Amazon I'm not so sure I agree with. He's no different from Sony -- he just wants to get money. He's just been able to figure out how to get it from venture capitalists even when Amazon had never shown a profit! Bezos is in the Kindle market only as long as he thinks it will sell content. And if the initial bubble of interest doesn't continue, he'll drop it just as Sony will.

But there are differences between the older Sony format losses and the current ebook reader battle, in my opinion. Sony is such a huge corporation that niche products such as the Reader are hobbies. If the proper corporate executive likes that hobby, it will last as long as he/she feels like keeping it going. If the executive gets the boot, the product will disappear. Amazon also may be treating it like a hobby, since no matter how hard ANY of the ebook reader developers try, there will always be some best-selling authors who will adamantly refuse to let their books be released electronically, so paper books will always remain an important aspect of Amazon's cash flow.

And Sony learned from the betamax debacle -- the only reason they lost was that they hadn't guaranteed a content flow and the VHS consortium got to the studios before Sony did and got big names to release movies in VHS format only. So Sony went out and bought Columbia before the CD and the DVD hit the market, so it owned a huge amount of desirable content and therefore had much more clout for its versions of those products.

Amazon is a huge bookseller, not a publisher, so it can't guarantee content for the Kindle any better than Sony can. Sony is partnering with Borders, which Amazon LOST, so that now Sony/Borders has much more purchasing power and influence in getting publishers to release new content in Sony format. Amazon as a bookseller has mobipocket now as a format, so it really seems a lot more like an old-fashioned wild-west shootout on main street than the betamax/vhs battle.

You feel that the Sony will be gone and the Kindle will remain as the victor.

I'm not so hopeful -- I can see how the Sony might be gone, but I also see the Kindle as being gone as well, with some as-yet-unpublicized product in the development stages, brought out by a consortium of publishers since they own the content and will ultimately be able to decide the outcome.

We'll all be using something like the Bertelsmann ebook in a few years, or the Random House HandBook or the Viacom Victor.

01-05-2008, 08:05 AM	#2
dhbailey Guru Posts: 604 Karma: 733 Join Date: Mar 2007 Device: HP iPAQ211 / PRS 500, 700 and 505	I don't take your post as an insult, and it certainly does have the weight of history behind it. Your points are unarguable, most of them. But your comment on Bezos and Amazon I'm not so sure I agree with. He's no different from Sony -- he just wants to get money. He's just been able to figure out how to get it from venture capitalists even when Amazon had never shown a profit! Bezos is in the Kindle market only as long as he thinks it will sell content. And if the initial bubble of interest doesn't continue, he'll drop it just as Sony will. But there are differences between the older Sony format losses and the current ebook reader battle, in my opinion. Sony is such a huge corporation that niche products such as the Reader are hobbies. If the proper corporate executive likes that hobby, it will last as long as he/she feels like keeping it going. If the executive gets the boot, the product will disappear. Amazon also may be treating it like a hobby, since no matter how hard ANY of the ebook reader developers try, there will always be some best-selling authors who will adamantly refuse to let their books be released electronically, so paper books will always remain an important aspect of Amazon's cash flow. And Sony learned from the betamax debacle -- the only reason they lost was that they hadn't guaranteed a content flow and the VHS consortium got to the studios before Sony did and got big names to release movies in VHS format only. So Sony went out and bought Columbia before the CD and the DVD hit the market, so it owned a huge amount of desirable content and therefore had much more clout for its versions of those products. Amazon is a huge bookseller, not a publisher, so it can't guarantee content for the Kindle any better than Sony can. Sony is partnering with Borders, which Amazon LOST, so that now Sony/Borders has much more purchasing power and influence in getting publishers to release new content in Sony format. Amazon as a bookseller has mobipocket now as a format, so it really seems a lot more like an old-fashioned wild-west shootout on main street than the betamax/vhs battle. You feel that the Sony will be gone and the Kindle will remain as the victor. I'm not so hopeful -- I can see how the Sony might be gone, but I also see the Kindle as being gone as well, with some as-yet-unpublicized product in the development stages, brought out by a consortium of publishers since they own the content and will ultimately be able to decide the outcome. We'll all be using something like the Bertelsmann ebook in a few years, or the Random House HandBook or the Viacom Victor.