The NYT has an interesting
write up on how Kobo is losing its race against Amazon to dominate the Japanese e-reader market.
Quote:
Amazon’s victory over Sony and Rakuten, which got into the e-reader business when it bought the Toronto-based Kobo in November 2011, began with aggressive pricing. Amazon sold the Kindle Paperwhite for 7,980 yen, or about $80. Not only was its price about $40 less than it was in the United States, it also matched that of Rakuten’s Kobo and Sony’s PRS-T2. [...]
But Amazon wasn’t winning just because of price. It also gave consumers another reason to prefer the Kindle. “The reason for the Kindle’s success in Japan is the same as it was in America,” said Munechika Nishida, author of “The Truth About the E-book Revolution” and a technology analyst. “The Amazon Web store is the easiest to use, the easiest to understand.”
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The current market shares according to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute:
- Amazon: 38.3 percent
- Kobo/Rakuten: 33 percent
- Sony: 25.5 percent
Many of you have noticed that Kobo
is currently revamping its online e-book store. Could this be the key for a successful fight against Amazon's market dominance?
[image: Haruhiko Okumura / Flickr]