Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
Are you telling us that if Amazon priced their e-books at purchase plus 22 cents they price the competition out of business?
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Oh, the adobe tax isn't just the money (though it obviously hurts).
There is also the lack of control over the user experience, issues of user support, control over the software and the hardware. And, don't forget that they have to pay upfront fees on the servers and the sdk, and royalties on the hardware and software.
It adds up to a lot more than 22 cents per file.
Again, look at the epub3 deployment: aside from the bloat of the spec, there is the fact that until Adobe releases their final epub3 rendering engine nobody knows to a certainty how those files are going to render on their hardware. Remember how for years adobe clients had no answer to Amazon's whispersync because Adept *required* a PC to authenticate a file for download to the reader? That was the adobe tax at work. For years, users with authentication issues had to bounce between the hardware vendor and adobe and often neither could solve the issue. Adobe tax again.
Adobe has their clients by the throat and they move, if at all, on Adobe's schedule. That is the way they like it. Nothing illustrates their approach than this whole kerflufle.
Apple and Amazon move on their own; they control their fate and they alone answer to their customers. That is a plenty big competitive advantage right there. Kobo is to be greatly admired for surviving under the adobe yoke although one has to wonder how much stronger might they be if they were full masters of their domain.