Quote:
Originally Posted by jocampo
USA is not the center of the Universe, but in terms of readers and market share, has a strong push and presence.
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Do you have any reliable and current figures? The figures I have seen are from around 2001/2002. These figure put the US market at something like 30 billion $ of book sales and the EU market is about 30 billion €. If we disregard the huge swings of currency valuations for the moment these figures indicate that the total European market is at least the size of the US market. This isn't too surprising as the EU is slightly larger than the US as regards the size of the population and the economy. Obviously the US is well ahead as regards the sale of ebooks, e.g. ebooks have a market share of 1% of the book market in Germany at the moment. However, we can expect a huge growth of the ebook market in Europe as well. Additionally, there are the very large book markets in Asia as well, e.g. in China and Japan. These figures certainly indicate that there is a viable future for a producer that relies on markets outside of the US.
Currently Sony rather seems to have problems to meet the demand of the 650 as it is. There are waiting lists of 6 weeks for a 650 in German bookstores. Until Sony gets this sorted out they don't have to worry about lack of market presence.
Someone at MediaMarkt (Europe's biggest retail chain for consumer electronics) told me that they are buying the 650 for 180 € from Sony, that's 255 $ at the current exchange rate. They sell it for 229 € (incl. 19% VAT), that's 325 $. Why should Sony dump its readers on the US market for bargain prices if they can sell them for premium prices in Europe?