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Originally Posted by AnemicOak
It's fairly widely speculated though that the DX was more or less a failure for them. It took years to sell through their stock of DX Graphite's (approx 3 years) and many discounted sales to achieve that. It has to at the very least make them and other manufacturers cautious about introducing new large screen models that will require pricing in direct competition with tablets.
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I think the DX doesn't fit with Amazon's stated strategy of selling hardware at cost and making a profit on content. Maybe they hoped for higher revenue from the academic market.
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Originally Posted by AnemicOak
This does seem to be the case. Of course we don't know if Dulin's and others who used to offer Onyx & Pocketbook readers (among other brands) stopped due to lack of sales or if there were other factors (perhaps Dulin will comment). I'm sure Onyx, Pocketbook, Bookeen, etc. would still be happy to sell to a US seller if one were to want to sell their product, and of couse US customers can buy some of them from overseas and have them shipped.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but Onyx & Pocketbook never sold directly to the American market. Any infiltration was via 3rd-party sellers. It's not the same thing.
Bookeen did sell directly to N.America (Canada anyway) and I recall seeing a statement they plan to release new models to N.America. I'm not sure of the situation there. They might be the easiest way of getting an 8" reader in N.America.
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Originally Posted by AnemicOak
Futher to your point though it also appears Kobo, while not withdrawing from the US market, has decided to just coast along in the US market and not try very hard to compete with Amazon.
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Kobo is the exception to the rule. They do offer more choice. It'll be interesting to see how the venture pans out. Notably, they were originally Canadian. Also, Amazon neglected the Canadian market, which is small, spread-out and about 25% French (Amazon stands to make more from English-reading markets). I think they saw it as small-fry. But they went after the UK market aggressively. This goes along with the argument that Amazon is not interested in marginal markets. It focuses on the main market with the largest return. Again, that's fine, but it has proved non-conducive to choice.
One point that occurs to me is that all the companies you mention are not N.American. Again, this suggests Amazon's dominance is stifling / hindering home-grown innovation / choice, and a non-American company is going to find it harder to penetrate the market. That's a double-challenge that is going to make the entry of alternative products extremely difficult for companies, and will mean very high prices for N.American customers seeking more choice.