Steve wrote:
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
The "average" person may only read 2 books/year, but I'll bet they read a lot more periodicals... in newspapers' case, the "average" person reads a daily newspaper... well, pretty much daily... and a magazine subscription means 12 mags a year, or 52 issues a year for weeklies, at $15-$30 for each. That can amount to some good sales numbers per person.
Sony may understand this, and hope the Reader will crack the periodical market eventually. If it does, maybe it'll pull e-books along with it.
Sony also probably expects a value-added advantage to work in their favor, like playing music, or (in the future) tying in ads and online purchasing, to make the Reader more popular and spur sales.
I think Sony knows the market. The only question is whether or not their hardware will hit the mark.
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Sony doesn't know the market at all! They are attempting the same thing that Gemstar tried- selling content. Gemstar crashed and burned. What is going to make Sony succeed here? Their business plan looks very much like, if not identical to, the Gemstar approach.
Consider-
1. The Sony Reader and the REB 1100 are priced (at introduction, at least) within $20 of each other. Both are nifty pieces of hardware.
2. Neither Gemstar or Sony seems to care at all that many readers want to put their own content on the device, not buy exclusively from the store. The software/hardware is geared towards displaying proprietary commercial, pricey "content."
3. Neither company asked why a periodical reader (of newspapers, magazines whatever) would want to shell out 300+ clams for an electronic reader that they have to fiddle with, hook up to a computer, keep charged, and then pay the same price for what they now get in print form.
4. Both companies initially believed the "PR hoopla" that was generated around their device.
Watch- Sony will crash and burn by April. By crash and burn, I mean they will realize they will never be the "ipod of ebooks" and will admit that their readers will grab only small market share. Gemstar did its final burn when the servers went down in August.
Someone will come along in a year or so and get this right. I hope.