Interview with the head of Pocketbook Global

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"B&M retail"? What do you mean by that?

Sorry. Didn't mean to be obscure.
The idea is that ebooks are mainstream enough, now, that online sales alone are not sufficient to reach all potential buyers; that interest is spreading to consumers that need to physically handle the product before buying.
Amazon's Bezos alluded to this a few weeks back, during the K3 intro, when he said they intended to get Kindles into the retail market beyond the handful of airport Kiosks and Target stores that now carry kindle.

Naturally, if the top three reader vendors (by volume) Kindle, Nook, and Sony, all have physical retail presence, any would-be competitor will have to either match that presence or risk getting shut out of that segment of the market. And, of course, that entails a whole new can of worms for the vendor with issues of channel conflict, supplying the pipeline, inventory distribution and management. Companies are going to have to grow substantially to be able to stay in the game.

Which might explain the upcoming PBG IPO; it's one quick way to raise capital to grow the company.

[Forkosigan]

In recent months, sales of readers under the delusion Pocketbook reached 50,000 a month ... This was not the whole year ... At the beginning of this year was only 10,000 per month ...

[Forkosigan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

1.35 million readers in a quarter is 450,000 a month. If Pocketbook are selling 50,000 a month, that means they have >10% market share. That's pretty impressive.

only 5% market share

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Naturally, if the top three reader vendors (by volume) Kindle, Nook, and Sony, all have physical retail presence, any would-be competitor will have to either match that presence or risk getting shut out of that segment of the market.

It's worth bearing in mind that the eBook reader market is very, very different in different parts of the world. The nook is a complete "non player" outside North America. Sony is the market leader in much of Western Europe; Pocketbook is in an equally dominant position in Eastern Europe. I don't know what dominates in the Far East, but I'm pretty sure it's not Kindle, nook, or Sony.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's worth bearing in mind that the eBook reader market is very, very different in different parts of the world. The nook is a complete "non player" outside North America. Sony is the market leader in much of Western Europe; Pocketbook is in an equally dominant position in Eastern Europe. I don't know what dominates in the Far East, but I'm pretty sure it's not Kindle, nook, or Sony.

Yes, it is very different in different areas.
(And note my comments were explicitly about competing in North America.)

However if you want to discuss the broader issue...
The economics of the industry all come out of the same chinese factories.
And since North America makes up 70-80% of the world market for eink readers those three are the top three worldwide regardless of where their strengths come from.

Ebook reader manufacture is really a single market.
Ultimately, the availability of components and system pricing and design features of the generic OEM models will be impacted, if not outright determined, by the North American market. (It already is; just look at all the generic Kindle wannabes flowing out of China.)

And, don't forget, Kindle *is* a world player. At uniform prices.
They don't need to dominate a market to influence it.
Consumers are bound to compare the locally-available devices to the Kindle and if the value equation doesn't hold up they are not going to be happy.
(Let's see how long Sony's european domination lasts with the PRS-300 running 130 pounds versus Kindle at 109. The posts I see here suggest Sony is going to have to act fast.)

For better or worse, North America is leading the way in the adoption of eink readers and the mainstreaming of ebooks in the west. And by sheer volume, they are setting the terms of the industry. (China and Japan are more idiosyncratic markets and really separate. Yet even in Japan, Kindle is making ripples.)
Devices are going to have to get cheaper everywhere.
And as devices get cheaper, vendors are going to have to grow their volume to be able to survive on the shrinking margins. (Fixed costs will eat them alive otherwise.)

Pocketbook is doing fine at 50K per month but those sales are spread across multiple markets and North America is one of those markets. If they intend to stay in it, they are going to have to compete on NorthAmerican terms. And those terms are going to require some form of physical retail presence. Without it they won't be able to mine the market properly and might be better of leaving it.

So far they have shown no interest in leaving so the must intend to compete. Which is great. But competing in NorthAm means meeting the requirements of the market because, yes, the North American market *is* different. It is also where volume sales are to be found. If you need volume, you need to be here.

[Kumabjorn]

I don't believe E-book readers are freely available in East Asia yet. When I got my Kindle I mentioned it to some Japanese friends and they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I looked it up on the Japanese language version of Wikipedia and it mainly dealt with Kindle, Sony and Nook, clearly stating that none supported Kanji (ideographs). Hence, there is really no software available either. Japan has Aozora Bunkan, a site similar to Gutenberg for copyright-free books, so there is a potential for E-books based on HTML. When I saw that Kindle 3 would support double-byte character, such as Kanji, I immediately ordered one. I assume it will be a while before books are readily made available, but it seems clear to me that Amazon, with a presence in both Japan and China, are trying to establish themselves there before anyone else.

[murraypaul]

However they can support Chinese/... documents as long as they are in PDF with embedded fonts. I have a colleague who reads in Chinese on his 505.

[Kumabjorn]

Which is probably fine for a tech-savvy user, but a hurdle for your average Chen.

[HansTWN]

There are plenty of ebook readers in China, with special software for Asian languages, though. On both my Sony 505 and the Irex I needed to install fonts to display book titles. But PDF files work fine right out of the box.

Lots of people read on their phones, though. The local phone company, CHT even has a special ebook app for various phones.

[Kumabjorn]

Are there any large scale vendors for content?

[anthony_barker]

Don't forget ipad in your ereader tally...

1 million a month potential epub, pdf, kindle readers.
I personally know at least 4 people who bought them for reading (as well as browsing)...