Quote:
Originally Posted by sonyreaderfan
FWIW, it's sold out at a lot of Best Buys. A salesman said that they aren't getting anymore shipments.
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To me, the T1 was not a great marketing move. I know a lot of people don't like to hear any criticism of the T1, but, in many ways, it was a step down from the previous generation. I, for one, love the 950 for its bigger screen, for 3g and content auto-delivery.
The T1 was a cheaper version, made to compete with the lower prices of Amazon. But, truth is, you can't compete.. if you offer hardware that is comparable to a Kindle, you get hammered on not having the Amazon ecosystem, which works so much better... What I am trying to say is that SONY had a hardware advantage (until the x50 series) and they decided to give that up to compete on price.
On top of that, the T1 was plagued by problems for quite a while after release. I am not surprised the result is a desperate, sclerotic pricing roller coaster.
We have given SONY for dead in the ereader market more than once, so I know better than to read too much into this. But I believe that hardware providers have no future in this business - it's all about making a buck on book sales to subsidize a cheap device (which has been the Amazon model all along). And SONY just can't compete at that game, not with its mediocre and US-only SONY store, not with the garbage of software that it is offering.
SONY's only hope is to go back to producing superior hardware for a market niche.