Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Barnes and Noble are probably more interested in selling content than e-readers, which is why they stopped including a microSD slot, but I think their approach is short-sighted. Better to seduce the buyer with hardware options and then make purchasing from their store too easy to forgo.
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Uh-huh.
There are two approaches to walled garden hardware:
1- you try to make the hardware as desirable as you can to the consumer and after they buy the gadget they'll be committed to the content. (Apple and the gaming console vendors all do this. In ereaders, Sony and Kobo do it.)
2- people are pre-committed to your content store and will put up with whatever it takes to get to it. Cable companies do this. You want broadband? You want a few choice channels they carry? You buy the packages they sell. Take it or leave it. B&N has long taken this approach, assuming their B&M customers will automatically go with Nook and never consider anything else. The new glowlight embodies this philosophy to the hilt. The very features they used to highlight as differentiators to promote the hardware they now have ditched, producing a device with the same generic strengths as the competition and only one selling point: they're not Amazon.
Kobo has to be feeling better today than last week.