Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You are perhaps forgetting that the vast majority of us do not have the option of going to Amazon. If Sony open up their store to international customers, that will give them a significant "edge" over Amazon.
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True enough.
Still, remember that Sony consolidated its Reader effort in the USA, partly because for once, it seems the USA is the hottest market at the moment. That did not follow the cell phone model of Japan-first, for some reason. Go figure, outside of Boston, Austin, and NY, I would have guessed the per-capita reading to be better in Great Britain, but maybe the size of that market is just not big enough. Or maybe it's still difficulties with publishers and DRM/regional requirements. And it's all largely what-if type speculation. Amazon has websites and "
presence" overseas, so it's just as likely they could come out with a GSM variant Kindle and sell it in Europe, various other locations. See:
http://ireaderreview.com/2008/12/05/...uk-canada-gsm/
and
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/24/k...or-a-sim-card/
for some indications that Amazon is looking at GSM and eventual International sales, even off a Kindle-2 base.
It could be, though, that Amazon (and perhaps Sony and/or Apple) is waiting for
LTE to become available, and viable, as a cell format, the promise there being more world-wide.