Quote:
Originally Posted by derangedhermit
A rising tide does float all boats, and my favorite market to compete in, before I retired and could choose where we concentrated, was a growing one. Life is much easier for all involved. The ebook business overall is still growing very nicely year-over-year.
As far as real competition, has any of this substantially lowered prices for the consumer on an ongoing basis for the basic product? Show us that e-book prices going down year-by-year. That addresses the OP's question.
B&N's (and the Nook part) results were worse than Amazon, and Sony in the same area worse than B&N's. Google can $tay till they win if they choose to, and Apple has huge cash too, and their iFanatics. I expect B&N to struggle to stay in business; I don't know how the B&N-MSoft thing will turn out, which is now more relevant to ebooks; it's not clear what they are doing yet (to me). At least MSoft has $ and technology to help them stay in the business longer.
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Good point about the original OP. I cannot and would not make the claim that the competition is lowering prices for the consumer...yet.
I could (but I will not, because it has been costly information to obtain over the past three years) prove to you that a "road map" of sorts has been established that charts a clear path to a time when there will be lower prices for consumers as a result of that competition. But there is no doubt that time is quite a ways off.
I would be interested in seeing actual, accurate ebook numbers being reported. The IDPF numbers are great for fundraising, but hardly accurate to the massive sales being achieved by even the smaller bookstores. Too many data sources do not report their results, so the IDPF's numbers are at best partially accurate.
Now, that said, you're absolutely right about the tiered results for Amazon's competitors. But to imply that they're all effectively on the edge of insolvency because of Amazon doesn't reflect my knowledge of the industry.
It's kind of like the auto industry. Yes, Toyota and Honda and Ford may dominate in a number of segments. But that doesn't mean Hyundai or even Kia are on the edge of insolvency. And it doesn't mean that Toyota won't make another major misstep at some point, or fail to achieve technological and quality dominance in a clearly defined way, only to be overtaken by someone else down the road.