Quote:
Originally Posted by Calenorn
No one talks about this, but it seems to me the manufacturers' error was in making the hardware for these devices TOO good. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with them. But I also have no reason to upgrade.
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Oh, it's talked about as the reason why iPad sales peaked around 2014 and why tablet and PC sales have flattened and even declined in some categories.
But...
That applies primarily to companies whose goal is to sell gadgets.
That doesn't necessarily apply to the ereader business post-2010 after the rise of walled gardens and near-cost pricing.
Whether you're talking Kobo, Tolino, Nook, or Amazon, an ebook vendor makes more money if a customer spends $100 on ebooks (around $30) than if they spend them on a new reader (around $10-20). If anything, a reputation for durability helps draw in late adopters who are reassured they won't have to buy a new reader every couple of years to maintain access to their ebook hoard.
The gaming console business has been moving in this direction for the past few years with the adoption of x86-based hardware, mid-generation refreshes that preserve compatibility, and hints that the current platform will be "the last generation" (yeah, right!) to get customers to adopt/stay with their platform.
In both cases the primary product is the content, not the gadget, and over the life of the gadget the customer will be spending large multiples of the gadget cost on books/games. Also, in both cases the success of the platform depends on keeping content creators happy, which means that the $100 spent on ebooks instead of a reader delivers $70 to publishers instead of the hired contract manufacturer.
The gadgets are important for customer acquisition but that importance declines once the customer commits to the walled garden. At that point retaining the customer hinges more on the content than the device.
Now, if interoperable epub had prevailed we would be looking at a situation closer to the phone business where the gadget makers try to get you to "upgrade" every year or two with hype, cutesy ads, wizzbang new "features" and specsheet engineering instead of highlighting the content.
We're not living in the best of all ebook worlds but things aren't playing out badly.
If only there were some commitment on the part of Google and Rakuten to actually compete...