Quote:
Originally Posted by SCION
But does it make sense to the consumer who'll probably be sticker shocked, just as the original poster was?
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Question is: Who's their (potential) consumer?
Unfortunately, we don't see any real figures. We more or less have to speculate about hardware sales and content revenue.
As a comparison, we often hear about 500k Kindles per year.
If that's true (and given the surprisingly low figures of content revenue Analysts gave a few weeks ago [about $ 100m for Amazon year-to-date October 2009] this seems about right), we can assume that smaller ones like BeBook, Cybook, iRex, ... will be way lower.
Maybe 100k units per year globally?
Maybe even less?
So we're obviously not talking about the average book reader, but a very small niche of enthusiasts.
And for those enthusiasts, costs may not be that important.
Just an example: I've been a Commodore-fan til the last second. So I've bought my very first PC only in 1995. It was $ 4.000 then. I certainly wouldn't be willing to pay even half of it today. But back then, as an early adopter (very first Pentium 100), I didn't hesitate.
I assume, they've done their market research.
And as they've got their plant in Germany, I guess they've got financial support from Germany and the EU. And they definitely insist on a valid business plan.