Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
You do remember this *was* the status quo before Kindle, right?
And Sony abandoned *their* walled garden to follow the standards bandwagon with the result that they're down to 4th place in sales and leapfrogged by two newcomers is barely a year.
It can be argued that it was the Walled garden approach is what allowed ebook readers to go from hobbyist tech toy/PC peripheral to a consumer item. (Not saying it is TRUTH, just that it can be debated.  )
Even today, there are both hardware vendors and ebookstores playing by agnostic rules; and being outsold 10 to 1. The same thing happened in digital music; the Apple walled garden steam-rollered the multivendor standard approach.
The evidence so far suggests that in some businesses tight integration to make tech more accessible can be more compelling to the mass market than more open approaches. It is still too early in the game to say ebooks are one such, but the evidence (so far!) leans that way. |
I don't think it was the walled garden approach that helped Apple and others do well - it was the rest of the platform and ease of use. I remember when the first Sony Readers came out...they were horribly complicated to use. Considering that ereading was very niche at the time and that most of us were ereading on our computers...it wasn't a good approach.
I'm sure that some of the issues that other non-handcuff device makers are having is a lack of platform: the standard consumer has become used to not shopping around. They don't always know that you can buy from the publisher (and others) direct. They haven't heard of Smashwords, fictionwise etc.