Quote:
Originally Posted by mersfire
I also think you are correct in that B&N management most likely expected a >100% year on year growth in sales of their Nook devices. And this is where I conjecture that they would have seen better sales if Amazon had not stolen the show with their barrage of new devices and new prices. And since it was obvious Amazon was going to go all out with their Fire and new e-paper Kindles, B&N should have been better prepared or had a better/faster response to keep the spotlight on themselves.
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It was all a matter of timing: B&N made their move in the summer, Amazon in late fall and it just didn't give them time to react. Two other blows to B&N's plans (at least on paper--not sure if they made much of an impact on sales) is that both Kobo and Sony matched the $99 price point: Kobo with their own ad-supported model, Sony without ads and with sound.
A couple other points:
1- If you look at Amazon's pricing you'll notice that their ad-free prices are not terribly aggressive. They weren't gunning for a price war.
2- The Kindle Touch is very clearly a rush job, probably started in the summer, so Amazon launching in November was not a clever move; just necessity. Ditto for FIRE.
3- Amazon is, as usual, obscuring their sales numbers so we don't know if *they* have a shortfall on the eink side. It is quite possible that eink reader sales have just plateau-ed. After all, there is a finite supply of book reading customers to sell ebook readers to. And the extremely fast growth of the last two years is (was?) unsustainable on a long term basis.
Add it up and it seem pretty clear B&N's problems are more about misreading the market than getting outwitted. Or outmarketted.
