murg: Wow, I couldn't disagree with their comments more! They say:
Quote:
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Having announced three new devices you would think Kobo would have had a good week. However, when you step back, the week will belong to Amazon who clearly upstaged the a poorly timed announcement from Kobo. The one thing you don’t do is beat your chest and declare you are a winner when the opposition is about to wipe the smile off your face. Kobo’s offer is now an also ran and like their service they are seen as having a poor competitive offer. Rakuten need to step up their investment and focus on building a real differentiator if they have any hope of competing in the major markets. It is clear that Kobo now have a narrow media offer and devices are not going to make any difference whatever they price them at. They are competing on the wrong thing, but perhaps like other forgotten pretenders such as Sony, that’s all they have got.
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Mileage obviously varies - but for me, Kobo's announcement completely took the wind out of Amazon's sails. I was after a light, decently-powered eink device with a frontlight and good font management, ideally but not necessarily one with epub and Australian library support and an upgrade in screen resolution, and Kobo delivered on every point. Which meant that after Kobo's announcement, I lost interest in Kindle's media extravaganza. And the timing meant that Kindle were the
last of the Nook/Kobo/Kindle triad to bring a frontlit device to the market, undermining claims to being an innovation leader.
The only way Kindle may have been able to compete for my dollar would be the addition of physical pageturns buttons on the edges and mmmaybe audio support (this is a take or leave for me, but might have been enough for me to take a second look), but their interest in those seems to be in the toilet along with their interest in adequately servicing the Australian market.