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Originally Posted by Cactus Chef
Someone remind me what Tolino's business angle is, again? Does Kobo just not have a presence in Germany such that it made more sense to let another company rebrand their hardware and flash another OS onto it?
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Before their partnership with Kobo, Tolino managed to become the second largest e-reader brand in Germany. At one point they even sold more ebooks (45% market share in 2014) than Amazon (39% market share in 2014).
Tolino and Amazon combined made up more than 80% of the market, which gives you an idea of how "big" Kobo, Pocketbook, Sony (etc.) were in Germany...
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https://www.lesen.net/ebook-news/tol...t-haben-16328/
Back then Kobo and Tolino had very different "business angles".
Tolino was directly competing with Amazon, mirroring their portfolio and aggressive pricing. (Which is one of the reasons for their success.)
Kobo on the other hand tried to avoid any direct confrontation with Amazon. They had no competitor for the Kindle Paperwhite (the Glo HD was quickly discontinued) and no direct competitor for the Voyage. Instead Kobo was seeking new pastures in bigger screens or special features (waterproofing, etc.).
I believe, Kobo's line-up of e-readers today was heavily influenced by their partnership with Tolino.
Since Tolino wanted to continue to directly compete with Amazon, they needed something like the Clara HD as a competitor for the Paperwhite. And something like the Libra H2O as an equivalent to the Oasis.
I still maintain,that without Tolino the Clara HD would not have existed at all and the Libra H2O would probably not have had such a similar design as the Oasis.
So yeah, while Tolino only rebrands Kobo devices these days, I think you can definitely see the influence they had on Kobo.
