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Originally Posted by tech_au
I agree whole-hearttedly. I am a one-eyed Sony 505 fan( not much choice about this as options are very limited in Oz at present) but I am very impressed at how many Kindles have been sold in the US despite the fact that it is the ugliest in the world at present and severely limited in the formats it can read. Big Kudos to Amazon's Marketing prowess.
Sony started down that road but thankfully took a Uturn with the new firmware.
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I do think marketing power has a lot to do with it but the differences in features and content availability are still quite compelling for many people. We can't deny the power of the top spot on the front page of Amazon.com all the way through the Christmas shopping season and beyond. Now they even have Oprah behind it. I doubt most Americans had heard of ebook readers until the Kindle. I'm sure many of them still don't even realize there are other devices out there. By contrast, I don't think Sony really threw all that much marketing muscle behind their device.
Still, marketing isn't everything. I've been interested in ebook reading for a long time before the Kindle came out. I even like the looks of the Sony Reader better. It's a good deal less expensive, too, yet I waited about a year since I first spotted it in a shop before getting the Kindle. If it were all about marketing and looks, I'd have long been the owner of a Sony Reader. It was the only e-ink game in town when I first started looking at e-ink devices. The feature set of the Sony Reader just wasn't acceptable to me. The Kindle's not perfect but I found it good enough to take the plunge. I'm still amazed that Sony hasn't added at least dictionary support in the new model. I was hopeful when I saw epub support come out that they were getting more active in adding firmware features. I know it's a great device for a lot of folks, but it's not one-size-fits-all as Harry says. We all have our own sets of priorities for what we want in a device.
Of course once you have the device, you need books and Amazon really does have a ton more of the content I'm looking for. They did a great job integrating store and device. Plus, I think the wireless delivery is pretty attractive for folks who aren't the most comfortable with computers. I bought when it first came out, too, so at that point they were charging A LOT less than most other ebook stores. These days other shops have lowered the prices to compete but Amazon is still usually a bit less and you get the free sample chapters. So even if you go beyond the marketing and do research on the available devices, there are still plenty of reasons folks might go with the Kindle even if, like you, they don't particularly love the looks. Not all Kindle owners are consumer zombies.