Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
As it is now, when manufacturers with names unfamiliar to the general public struggle to keep the prices of their devices, which might be as good as the Kindles or Kobos but objectively no better (but may struggle with looking worse design-wise, being slower and having patchy or non-existent support), near the same level as those Kindles or Kobos and are often even more expensive, it does seem to indicate that offering cheap-but-decent basic devices without having a large bookshop to rely on for the actual income is currently not possible.
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When Amazon sell the Kindle at cost, relying on content sales for their profit, it's extremely difficult for anyone to compete on cost terms because:
1. They need to make a profit on selling the device itself.
2. They almost certainly won't be able to match Amazon's bulk discounts on the cost of manufacturing the device, because Amazon are manufacturing in enormously greater volumes.
The successful manufacturers who are not associated with a bookstore have to compete by offering premium products and sell on features, rather than price.