Quote:
Originally Posted by FrustratedReader
Is there any reason why NO eink reader other than Kindle has the Amazon app, but phones & tablets do? Or is there such a thing officially?
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Yes.
And yes.
Back around 2010-ish, Amazon offered to license the app to any eink or tablet vendor that was interested. No takers because the app required (and still does) internet access. Tablets come with wireless but at the time hardly any ereaders did, so tablet makers accepted Amazon's offer but not eink vendors. All were betting on Adobe ADEPT epub which didn't support wireless until a couple years later.
And then B&N switched the ereader pricing model to near cost, which shifted the bulk of ereader profits to the walled garden stores and effectively closed the US market to hardware only ereader vendors. At that point it made little sense to sell ereaders to the US, at all, so tbat out of 42 eink models shown at CES 2010, less than a dozen even showed up.
As noted above, today over 95% of eink readers sold are walled garden readers. All because B&N thought they could undersell Kindle.
Side note: trying to make a bit more money off Kindles, Amazon introduced the ad-supported "Special Offers" Kindles to undercut B&N in advertised pricing, thinking people would prefer to pay $15 (all profit) to get rid of the ads. Turned out the ads weren't obtrusive enough and most people didn't mind. The ad revenue was enough that Amazon expanded ads to the tablets and web and today today tbey are raking in several billions in ad profits. It's not Google/Facebook tens of billions big but, as they say "a billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money".
B&N did Amazon a lot of favors that year.