Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
What does that have to do with selling readers in a foreign market?
Regarding B&N
Regarding everyone else
|
Everything.
It's all about the money.
In 2010 there was good money (around $100 per unit) in sellng ereaders, alone, globally. The big Consumer electronics companies like Asus, Acer, Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung, all thought so.
Today none of those do.
With hardware prices and margins low it only makes sense for walled garden players and smaller regional players.
And the issue isn't selling internationally, for Bookeen, Pocketbook, etc; but selling into the *US*. Once prices hit near cost and the margins hit near zero so did sales.
When sales go down enough, support and warranty costs outweigh the limited profit.
Seriously, how many units do you expect Bookeen would sell into the US,
against Kindle, Kobo, and even Nook?
Dozens, hundreds?
How much would it cost to staff up for marketing, shipping, returns, repairs, and user support? For $10-20 a unit?
Why do you think Kobo relies on local partners like Walmart instead of doing local marketing and support themselves?
It's not 2010, when the US market was open to all comers and prices were high.
There simply isn't enough money in selling onesies and twosies here, at competitive prices. Ahdf you can comoete, why bother?
You keep trying to compare two different worlds when the rules are too different. In fact, they were too different by the time B&N decided to belatedly sell in the UK.
The time to strike and build up the local infrastructure for Nook was 2010-11, when ereaders sold wity decent profits, even without followup book sales.