Quote:
Originally Posted by rantanplan
I think you got it backwards. Kobo innovated, because Boox and other makers created the Note and colour devices. Amazon was super late to the party.
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Onyx Boox, Bigme, reMarkable all chased niche Markets. Neither Kobo nor Amazon copied them.
Most likely the issue is what do you put in a new model once you have 32G Flash, decent frontlight, 300 dpi etc. You add note taking. Amazon was late to that.
Then what do you do? Note taking on smaller models (The Libra 2 mysterious had the stylus support, but only the usual sketch pad).
Then maybe eInk Corp says: You want something for a new model? Or Kobo asks them, and they decide to do Kaleido. Tech that's been possible for 15 years. Maybe the price is reduced.
So Amazon does a walled garden note taking model with weirdly different SW, leveraging their KFX and gets a temporary exclusive on 300 dpi 10" plus size.
Then they also add the Kaleido 3 (which is no innovation).
I don't see that Kobo has been copying anyone else, but Amazon has certainly been trying to copy and out do Kobo on the lastest PW, Scribe and Colorsoft.
Note that none of them have their own ereader factories and the most expensive part is the single source eink panel. You can buy a decent Android phone or tablet for less than the price of a replacement eink panel for current models, though no doubt the there is a good bulk discount. Look at Amazon Fire models (and those probably have a better margin!).