[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I'm not sure how long ad-supported readers will last
Last century's ad-supported PCs didn't last more than a year or two.
And Amazon not only sells ad-free Kindles across the board, they also allow consumers to change their minds and convert to ad-free. So the whole category might be a short-lived marketshare grab before current-tech reader sales plateau. (Which is coming.)

I had mercifully forgotten the ad-supported PCs.

But I don't think that these books have much in common with that poorly thought out idea - IIRC, all of the work you did on your computer basically took place in a window, with ads being around the outside. So even if you were writing a word document, (or maybe a WordStar document; I think this was a while ago), you would be exposed to the ads. I remember wondering whether I could cut out a cardboard frame and tape it to the monitor so that it would always hide the ads. The savings were pretty substantial - I think at a time where computers basically cost $1,000, you could buy one with ads for $99.

The whole point of Kobo doing this now is, first and foremost, to be able to advertise the magic $99 price point without having to bite the bullet and lower the MSRP across the board the way B&N did. It allows them to match the current entry-level US pricing without annoying buyers elsewhere by making it a "different" product which needs local partners and thus can't be shipped outside the US.

I think that's probably right. It is also nice for Kobo that Amazon has already demonstrated that this works - there was some risk that ad-supported readers would not be accepted, and the downside of this risk would have been much greater for a smaller brand like Kobo than for Amazon.

If it turns out that Amazon's claims are true and the ad-supported readers do outsell the ad-free models, well, that would give them a leg up on B&N even if the ads only bring in a trickle of revenue. Wouldn't surprise me if the KoSO were a preemptive strike at B&Ns international ambitions.

In the short term B&N and Sony are Kobo's immediate competition. If you are locked into the Epub infrastructure, it's trivial to switch to B&N or Sony, and more complicated to switch to Amazon. If ads allow you a $40-$50 discount over those rivals (or a lesser discount plus increased profit), you will be in much better shape. B&N, also, unlike Sony or Kobo, seems to make more from sales at its own store, and so can afford to price the devices less. This helps even that out.

Unless all these gadgets are a lot cheaper to build than the iSuppli's of the word are telling us, the battle for the US market is now officially an endurance contest for second place and the title of "Top Epub reader", to serve as a springboard into the undeveloped markets of europe.

Probably true. They should also need to move quickly into the continental European market before Epub becomes secondary to Kindle as very quickly happened in the UK.

Anyway, whether ad-supported readers endure or not, there will always be ad-free choices.
They'll just be pricier.

I think this is right, and I hope that you will have the option of buying a subsidized e-reader and then paying to remove the ads. For most new e-reader buyers (I believe; this was true in the case of me and people I know), there is a lot of trepidation associated with buying the first e-reader. These people have read books all their lives, have heard good things about e-readers, but also probably don't like reading on their computer screens, and so are very suspicious about whether they will actually like reading on a screen. (And it doesn't help that advertising e-ink on LCD screens is a lot like advertising color TVs on B&W TVs - you can't really appreciate the difference). So getting the initial cost as low as possible is important because customers are afraid that they may end up not using the reader and thus wasting the money they spent.