Quote:
Originally Posted by GlenBarrington
Does it matter, really? From reading the entire thread, it is clear the consumer is held hostage by whatever national and economic constraints 'the system' places on them. And then the availability of books themselves seems constrained by a byzantine network of
publishing rights, anti-competition laws, and outright government meddling.
Reading what you want to read has always been a lot of work. It seems that as economics and literacy were eliminated as barriers, artificial barriers were put up to replace them.
|
By now personal preference is a major discriminator on ereaders.
Truth is, outside comparison articles, the two companies rarely compete for the same buyer anyway. Instead each focuses on very different buyers: Kobo and the hardware only ereaders cater to interoperability believers and Amazon caters primarily to Prime subscribers and phone/tablet folks.
And both benefit from the same lock-in effect of all walled gardens.
For the vast majority of buyers in the outside world, the choice is of which walled garden you want to commit to. The differences at the hardware and OS level pale before the differences in the rest of the systems. And, while some folks despise the very idea of ads, the majority of buyers don't. They'd rather spend the money saved on books. It's not as if the things pop up every other page or at all, during reading. And what they serve out isn't ads for depilators or garden hoses, but rather for books similar to ones already purchased. So Amazon doesn't need to worry about ad-free prices. (Besides, Kindles go on sale every other month anyway. List prices barely matter.)
Most people just want to read with the least amount of fuss. Download. Read. As cheaply as possible. The reader is just a means to an end. For most folks the least obstrusive reader is the best reader.
That's how Kindle built up its massive user base.
As for Canadian prices, well that is a different market all its own.
Kobo owns it and Amazon doesn't much bother to contest it.
Likewise, Kobo doesn't particularly bother with the US other than the occasional partnership they hope might gain them some mind share, like with the ABA, BEST BUY, or WalMart. None move the needle enough for Amazon to worry, if at all.
They both play the game as if the other didn't exist.
Detente, ebook style.
