MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Has Sony lost the e-book battle against Amazon?

big_stan · 08-12-2008, 05:11 PM

I'm sorry to say (since I probably have one of the first 500's that were sold in the US) that Kindle is going to win this war. Why? Because Amazon's store is just great. It's very easy to find e-books, and trivial to download them to the reader. Sony's store/application is just terrible, and has been since day one.

The Sony reader might have better format format support, but honestly that's a non-issue for most non-technical people out there. The ability to click on the buy button on a web site and have the book just appear on the reader is totally ground breaking for most people. No playing around with applications on their PC (which may or may not work with whatever OS their using), no USB cables, etc.

Now I love my PRS-500 and will continue to use it for quite some time. But for me, there will be essentially no reason to stay with with Sony if I need a new reader. If long term customers like myself move to Amazon, why would a normal person buy a Sony in the first place?

BTW - I fully realize that most of my comments only make sense in the context of the US market at this time, but I think it's only a matter of time until we see a GSM/wifi version of the Kindle (maybe Kindle 2.0?), which will open it up to the entire world (just like the iPhone 2).

08-12-2008, 05:11 PM	#102
big_stan Member Posts: 14 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2006 Device: Sony Reader	Kindle, by a mile I'm sorry to say (since I probably have one of the first 500's that were sold in the US) that Kindle is going to win this war. Why? Because Amazon's store is just great. It's very easy to find e-books, and trivial to download them to the reader. Sony's store/application is just terrible, and has been since day one. The Sony reader might have better format format support, but honestly that's a non-issue for most non-technical people out there. The ability to click on the buy button on a web site and have the book just appear on the reader is totally ground breaking for most people. No playing around with applications on their PC (which may or may not work with whatever OS their using), no USB cables, etc. Now I love my PRS-500 and will continue to use it for quite some time. But for me, there will be essentially no reason to stay with with Sony if I need a new reader. If long term customers like myself move to Amazon, why would a normal person buy a Sony in the first place? BTW - I fully realize that most of my comments only make sense in the context of the US market at this time, but I think it's only a matter of time until we see a GSM/wifi version of the Kindle (maybe Kindle 2.0?), which will open it up to the entire world (just like the iPhone 2).