Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
...It is sheer fantasy to think all Kobo has to do is put its readers beside Kindles in retailers and people will choose Kobo every time. It would probably be close to 50/50 if the hardware was the only consideration. But when you take into account the whole user experience and infrastructure it will be 90% Kindle. Kobo's hardware can compete, but they are not even in the same ballpark as Amazon with everything else.
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Best Buy used to have Kindles, Nooks and Kobos "side by side." They quit selling Nooks and Kobos because they weren't competing. I like Nooks but I'm not delusional enough to think they could compete with Amazon and come out ahead or even close. Even WalMart is having trouble competing with Amazon. Where does that leave Barnes & Noble and Rakuten?
I do think that Kobo, if they want to compete with Kindle, needs an eReader under $100 again. They've got nothing to compete with Amazon's Basic Kindle (at $80) and often on sale for $50. (Or even refurbished at $40.) That's a whole "intro" market that Kobo just cedes to Amazon. Worse, it's probably the "intro market" that people gravitate to when first trying out an eReader and the ecosystem they'll stay in if the "eReading" habit "takes."