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Market
As with any product development timing is critical. To make a change such as you are talking about would require 6 to 9 months for another company to make those changes.
The product is made in China.
Even though we talk about a global economy there still are huge logistics involved. Engineer, Manufacture, Ship, Fill the pipeline to the retail outlets, and get the advertising in place.
You know that even ordering a product from Taiwan takes you two weeks for an item they already have produced and in stock in a warehouse.
Unfortunately, people running companies count on this factor. They take the attitude of where else are they going to go ?
That is why small start up companies can get their foot in the door because they are willing to work the extra, go the extra, and cut profits for expedited shipping, to get their foothold on the market. But then, the old guard people that are used to working in HIGH volume markets and distribution get brought in to help the growing company and things change from being hungry and responsive to business as usual.
As a company, Ectaco has to take a more aggressive approach and number one turn the system to open platform so that there are hundreds of developers fixing problems and expanding the system. I applaud Ectaco for the hardware platform they are using. It is a solid and tried and true platform that makes for easy development.
Their choice of screens make this unit stand out, we have seen the comments on the boards here that many people have so bought into the HYPE of epaper screens they won't even look at the jetbook. The people that have purchased the system love it and would never choose the other display technology.
The open source community is the strength of the computer world and have pushed the major manufacturers to make their products better. Decisions are made in a company to build or develop products that fit the majority where their highest profit margin is.
You know that Ectaco has to look at DRM as their highest priority, this allows them to sign co marketing agreements with content providers to market more jetbooks to more people.
I would say fonts would be the lowest, the jetbook works, people can read on in and a font change really makes no difference to selling jetbooks. User fonts are icing on the cake, to some it makes the cake sweeter.
IMO, someone needs to read this forum at Ectaco and make a bold move, we can all see Ectaco's business model for this product. It is selling as many of the units as possible. They are not an Amazon or a Barnes and Noble that make their money on the consumables (ebooks).
The Japanese built cdrom burners and built their business model around selling blank CDs. When they were selling for $10 each, the Japanese were making them for $.25 and laughing all the way to the bank. What happened to them, the Taiwanese came in and made them for $.25 and sold them for a $1.00 and killed the market for the Japanese.
The same is going to happen with ebooks. A company is going to start selling ebooks for the $2.00 they are worth and not like B&N that sell ebooks for MORE than the cost of a real printed book.
Ectaco came out with a great product that was not tied to the marketing whims of a major marketer like Amazon. Unless they open it to thousands of developers to add features at little or no cost, they will be upstaged not by the major companies, but by a new start up that is hungrier and more aggressive.
It is the individual that wants that different font, that at their own expense will take the time to implement user fonts. Or the other person that wants hyperlinks that will do it and GIVE it away to others, that will make the real change.
Ectaco has a solid product that could very easily become the defacto hardware standard for low cost ebook readers.
Lets just hope they see it soon.
Thanks for taking the time to read this rant.
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