Kobo Prime Candidate..Nook

[MrDoug]

I hear through the GRAPEVINE and some well advised folks that Kobo is a Prime candidate for a buy-out from NOOK aka Barnes and Noble of course.. If that did happen, that would surly energize the struggling Nook share of the market for e-readers and most importantly Book and Media sales.. which is the Ultimate Goal.. give the e-reader away at cost, and sell books etc, but also have the best e-Ink hardware to view and enjoy.. So what's your opinions and thoughts?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by MrDoug

I hear through the GRAPEVINE and some well advised folks that Kobo is a Prime candidate for a buy-out from NOOK aka Barnes and Noble of course.. If that did happen, that would surly energize the struggling Nook share of the market for e-readers and most importantly Book and Media sales.. which is the Ultimate Goal.. give the e-reader away at cost, and sell books etc, but also have the best e-Ink hardware to view and enjoy.. So what's your opinions and thoughts?

Do you mean Kobo will buy Nook or that Nook will buy Kobo?

The former is entirely possible and a not a bad idea. Rakuten can afford it and the technical expertise would be useful.

[Purple Lady]

B&N killed Fictionwise. I don't want them to kill Kobo too.

[MrDoug]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Do you mean Kobo will buy Nook or that Nook will buy Kobo?

The former is entirely possible and a not a bad idea. Rakuten can afford it and the technical expertise would be useful.

Kobo doesn't have enough cabbage to buy Nook. Sheesh.

[davidfor]

No, but I'm pretty sure that Rakuten, the owners of Kobo, do.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, but I'm pretty sure that Rakuten, the owners of Kobo, do.

And then some.
Thing is, there have been signs that Rakuten (outside the boss) is less than wildly committed to Kobo. So, while they can afford to buy Nook Media they might be just as interested in selling out.

To me, at this point the deal that makes most sense is for Google to buy either or both. Cause *their* ebook sales badly lag everybody. They need a jumpstart into relevance.

[taming]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And then some.
Thing is, there have been signs that Rakuten (outside the boss) is less than wildly committed to Kobo.

I'd like to know what those are. Can you share some of this information? I haven't seen anything about it, but I do not follow the ins and out of the Japanese financial markets.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by taming

I'd like to know what those are. Can you share some of this information? I haven't seen anything about it, but I do not follow the ins and out of the Japanese financial markets.

Rakuten runs a series of Amazon-like onlike shopping malls aggregating products from a variety of online stores along with their own subsidiaries. But not Kobo. Where Amazon takes every oppotunity to promote Kindle to their shoppers, Rakuten barely acknowledges Kobo exists, much less tries to send customers their way.

(Its been discussed at the EbookReader Blog and DigitalReader Blog.)
When Rakuten revamped and renamed Buy.com to Rakuten.com, a couple months back, I checked to see if Kobo was linked anywhere but it wasn't. Don't know if its changed but a search there for "ebooks" offered up at the top a print book on how to self-publish ebooks...for Kindle. On the hardware side they offered up a bunch of very old Ectaco readers and an out-of-stock pink Kobo reader from a third-party vendor.
Not a hint of integration or support for Kobo.com.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by MrDoug

I hear through the GRAPEVINE and some well advised folks that Kobo is a Prime candidate for a buy-out from NOOK aka Barnes and Noble of course.. If that did happen, that would surly energize the struggling Nook share of the market for e-readers and most importantly Book and Media sales.. which is the Ultimate Goal.. give the e-reader away at cost, and sell books etc, but also have the best e-Ink hardware to view and enjoy.. So what's your opinions and thoughts?

Mr Doug if you believe rumors that Barnes and Noble are going to buy Kobo or that Kobo (Rakuten valued at $14 billion with operating profit of almost $1 billion) couldn't buy B&N then you are obviously misinformed.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I can't believe that Rakuten will give up Kobo. They are eventually and they have to assume that eventually the Japanese market will enter the 21st century regarding ebooks and when that happens they don't want Amazon to be the only player in the market. I have no idea what the Japanese publishing sector is worth but it must be HUGE.

[taming]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Rakuten runs a series of Amazon-like onlike shopping malls aggregating products from a variety of online stores along with their own subsidiaries. But not Kobo. Where Amazon takes every oppotunity to promote Kindle to their shoppers, Rakuten barely acknowledges Kobo exists, much less tries to send customers their way.

(Its been discussed at the EbookReader Blog and DigitalReader Blog.)
When Rakuten revamped and renamed Buy.com to Rakuten.com, a couple months back, I checked to see if Kobo was linked anywhere but it wasn't. Don't know if its changed but a search there for "ebooks" offered up at the top a print book on how to self-publish ebooks...for Kindle. On the hardware side they offered up a bunch of very old Ectaco readers and an out-of-stock pink Kobo reader from a third-party vendor.
Not a hint of integration or support for Kobo.com.

I wondered if this is what fueled your speculation. My understanding is that Rakuten has a philosophy of not-competing with specialized third party sellers for on-line sales and that their strategy for Kobo is to partner with places like FNAC in France, Livraria Cultura in Brazil, WH Smith in the UK, etc.

Kobo, which Rakuten purchased for $315 million USD in 2011, does not sell directly except in Canada and recently after a hiatus, in the US, where it no longer has a major partner.

They are also in the process of transitioning buy.com to rakuten.com. It is definitely a work in progress. The Canadian site is terrible, though they do sell older models of Kobo devices on rakuten.com. I heard (and have no idea where at this point) that the fulfillment part outside of Japan was proving to be a challenge. The recent debacle with US fulfillment might be an example of that.

There is a video of Hiroshi Mikitani speaking at Kobo worth spending 11 minutes on. http://cafe.kobo.com/blog/kobo-in-co...rket-place-3-0

[taming]

I just found this quote and thought that rather than adding it on to my earlier one, it should stand on its own. From the April 1, 2013 edition of Wired.

From the start, Mikitani has shunned what he calls the “vending machine” model of e-commerce, the utilitarian, product-centered approach favored by Amazon. From the beginning, he has built Rakuten as a collection of individual digital shops branded and run by the merchants doing the selling. Mikitani believes shops foster a sense of human connectedness that makes shopping more fun.

It’s an instinct that’s paid off handsomely. Rakuten now handles more than one-quarter of all e-commerce business in Japan — more than twice as much as Amazon’s share in the country. Now in more than a dozen countries, the multi-billion–dollar company has expanded from shopping into a range of services, from travel to banking to e-readers (Rakuten owns Kobo). It could be the largest internet company you’ve never heard of.

But Mikitani’s planning to change that. In 2010, Rakuten acquired Buy.com. Earlier this year, the site was rebranded Rakuten.com and will serve as the company’s launching pad into American e-commerce (though for now it’s still in transition from its former self into its fully Rakuten-ized version). Mikitani recently stopped by Wired during the North America leg of his tour to promote his new book to talk about his approach to business, why he’s betting big on Pinterest, and why Rakuten requires even the workers at its Japanese headquarters to speak English.

Mikitani told me that the key to claiming a bigger share of the U.S. market lies in recreating the shop-centric approach that led to such success in Japan.

“We are a bazaar. We are not a supermarket,” Mikitani says. “We are creating a first-class shopping district instead of being a retailer ourselves.”

[david_e]

Oh good, another fabricated story about Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by taming

I just found this quote and thought that rather than adding it on to my earlier one, it should stand on its own. From the April 1, 2013 edition of Wired.

That would be the GE Conglomerate model.
Each unit totally independent and isolated and only linked to the rest at HQ.
(shrug)
It works for some.

As I said, the CEO is firmly behind Kobo.
The rest of the Company ignores it.
CEOs come and go so it's not out of the question that the next one might want to move it. Or not. Either way it won't make much difference.

For now Kobo has bigger pockets to draw on than when Indigo was the paymaster and they seem to be doing okay internationally. Maybe they like being on their own; it's better than being micro-managed, I suppose.

[taming]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As I said, the CEO is firmly behind Kobo.
The rest of the Company ignores it.

But perhaps no reason to think it might be up for sale, I suppose, especially when the CEO (who founded the company) still owns over 40% of it.

It seems to me that the lack of a Kobo presence on Rakuten's websites is no reason to believe that Kobo might be up for sale. From my perspective, it appears to be a reflection of their business model. Things change, of course, and who knows what will happen in the future.