Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You can store 2000+ typical novels on a Kindle. In all honesty I think that's sufficient local storage for the overwhelming majority of customers. Do you really think that a significant proportion of Amazon's customers are unhappy about it?
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Let's put it this way.
Things will not stay the same forever and surely Amazon knows that.
A significant number of people don't like Apple, and don't have to deal with them.
Quite a number of people don't like Amazon, but currently feel there is no real alternative ... yet.
Amongst those who put up with Amazon, are Publishers and Authors, not just buyers.
Kobo seem to be making a slow progression, but improving all the time. Their chief impediment for me, is their ebook price. If they can grow a big enough user base, the prices will come down.
Kobo is not the only other player ... and a new better one, could come on the scene any time.
Many people still don't realize the nature and benefit of E-ink.
A color E-ink will really change the game though, despite that.
Many people, especially the elderly, are currently experiencing eye issues and headaches with tablets/ipads ... with extended period use.
That said, tablets at least, do give one the freedom of both SD Card and USB stick.
A lot of Publishers are still playing games with ebooks.
There is still a large number of people who haven't been convinced to get into the ebook scene yet, for many reasons. One of those is the lack of freedom and power currently involved with the existing infrastructure. Another is the lack of fair and sensible pricing.
Despite what some think, a lot of users do in fact, want to have their whole collection on their ereader or a large portion of it, which is always growing ... for a variety of reasons.
So you could say, that it is only a matter of time, and that Amazon's sole mastery of the ebook scene (Apple aside) is a finite number of days.
Unless they think outside the Cloud.
One significant way to do that, is to give people more freedom.
So while they play around with other things like 'Family Member' etc, I think they will eventually need to revisit SD Card/USB stick. That feature might not have mattered to users much in the early days, but I suspect it is becoming more desirable by many now, and will only increase as we buy more ebooks.
Change is always on the horizon.