Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
I'm not sure you understand the concept of a standard.
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I understand the standard ebook format is currently .mobi, a proprietary format owned by Amazon. You know something's a standard when you can ignore all the other formats without facing economic hardship. As it is...you cannot ignore the Kindle if you wish to sell ebooks. You could very will ignore the Apple Store without much harm...or Barnes and Noble, or Sony. Frankly, you could do quite well sticking to Amazon. That's a standard.
Of course, competitors aren't too happy with folks just sticking with Amazon, so they agreed to support a "standard", which is merely a competing format that enables one to reach all the wanna-be's who, in aggregate, still could probably be ignored compared to Amazon.
Of course we, as consumers, desire to have numerous vendors all competing to sell us the same exact object. Causes prices to be lowered, allows us to fire vendors at will with no pain to ourselves. So of COURSE _we_ desire standard formats.
So there will always be an ebb and flow, a tug of war, between the market makers, the gaggle of wanna-be's and the customers.
Customers love innovation, they like new toys, they like new features. These dynamic and interactive textbooks are going to be VERY desirable. And thus customers are going to flock to them BECAUSE there is no competition to speak of.
But eventually the gaggle of wanna-be's, in order to compete with the entrenched market leader, will gang up and put forth "a standard". But it won't really be a standard, just another alternative...and one that will likely leave Apple in the position Amazon is today with respect to text books.
Lee