8+ Readers in comparison

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by stevenjotello

I am waiting to add a player of 8.9 or 10.7 at the end of this year or early next year (probably depends on if Sony comes out with it this year or I'll wait Plastic Logic). This will make 3 and is much work to juggle 2, I have now, then wow.

You never can be sure. But personally I'd be surprised if Sony came up with a tablet >7". If they'd have any plans to do so and would see significant market potential, they could have done so 1 or 2 years ago.

Personally, I'm not into readers >7" or 8" max.
iPad, Kindle DX or iRex 1000 simply are too bulky for me. iPad, in addition, is too heavy to conveniently hold it for reading for more than 1 hour.

I see a single advantage of such huge displays: Reading "professional" documents = text books, contracts, proposals, SLAs in their "original" size, without killing the layout by reflowing the text.
I simply don't have much use for that for now, so 6" or 7" are perfectly fine for me.
And when reading on the train for example, I just don't know how and where to place iPad or anything of similar size.

[OtterBooks]

Of course Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and (to some extent) Sony gladly make some profit on the hardware.
Samsung, developing and manufacturing most of its components, should be highly profitable in the hardware arena as well.
But clearly the potential, at least for revenue but in mid term for profit as well, is in the content.

Studies say, Amazon is taking a loss on lots of books for $ 9.99.
Why should they accept this, if not for market share? If they are willing to sponsor for now, obviously there has to be huge potential in this area in the future.

Interesting, and understandable theory. But for the sake of discussion: The "why" is already answered with their current profit off hardware. Amazon's Kindle revenue is primarily from hardware sales and they are doing well with it. This is not a situation like with gaming console manufacturers, where they took hardware losses in order to establish revenue from licensing and content.

Yes, Amazon may be hopefully speculating on a future change of the playing field that allows them to also profit from content, and conducting themselves partially with this in mind. However, they don't need it. Considering the current attitude of the publishing industry and Amazon's battles with them, it is very unlikely that content revenue is something Amazon is banking on as their primary goal. It could be Plan B, but Plan A is working fine.

Notice that every e-book Amazon doesn't have to pay for, they offer free. So they take a loss on books they do have to pay for, and give away the ones they don't.

An example of products sold with the intent of revenue from licensing:

Apple iPhone: 6% markup
Sony Playstation: -12% (loss)

Kindle: 48% markup. It's not as high as some electronics but it certainly is not the behavior of a product meant to profit from auxiliary revenue. As it stands, Amazon's approach is geared towards profiting from Kindle sales, and it's working. When you purchase a Kindle, you've done your share for Amazon's bottom line without ever purchasing an ebook.

[mahreen]

Hi,
I noticed you don't have the Kobo e-reader in your list. I would highly recommend that

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

Interesting, and understandable theory. But for the sake of discussion: The "why" is already answered with their current profit off hardware. Amazon's Kindle revenue is primarily from hardware sales and they are doing well with it. This is not a situation like with gaming console manufacturers, where they took hardware losses in order to establish revenue from licensing and content.

Yes, Amazon may be hopefully speculating on a future change of the playing field that allows them to also profit from content, and conducting themselves partially with this in mind. However, they don't need it. Considering the current attitude of the publishing industry and Amazon's battles with them, it is very unlikely that content revenue is something Amazon is banking on as their primary goal. It could be Plan B, but Plan A is working fine.

Notice that every e-book Amazon doesn't have to pay for, they offer free. So they take a loss on books they do have to pay for, and give away the ones they don't.

An example of products sold with the intent of revenue from licensing:

Apple iPhone: 6% markup
Sony Playstation: -12% (loss)

Kindle: 48% markup. It's not as high as some electronics but it certainly is not the behavior of a product meant to profit from auxiliary revenue. As it stands, Amazon's approach is geared towards profiting from Kindle sales, and it's working. When you purchase a Kindle, you've done your share for Amazon's bottom line without ever purchasing an ebook.

Of course I don't have any specifics. Neither from Amazon, nor from Apple.
But I've got some figures from manufacturing/IT.
Big corporates like Apple or Dell usually have general costs (sales, administration, marketing, ...) of roundabout 25%.
Seemingly huge gross margins of (for example) 50% easily shrink to way less than 10% EBIT.
That's the reason why new products very often have ROIs >> 3 to 5 years.
Just imagine the R&D costs of Apple...

For content, on the other side, it's similar to software: Once established, margins can be way bigger than for hardware sales.

Just compare:
"50% markup (or is it margin? Meaning; Top Down or Bottom Up?) minus taxes minus overhead minus R&D" vs. "20+X% uplift on iTunes or Amazon bookstore".
Which one will be more profitable? Which one has more potential for growth?
In my case, ratio between hardware and content may be in the range of 1:3 or maybe even 1:5. (€ 300 for the reader, which I'll use for maybe 3 years. But maybe € 200 for eBooks every single year).

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by mahreen

Hi,
I noticed you don't have the Kobo e-reader in your list. I would highly recommend that

I haven't added any ePaper reader since May 2010 (Cybook Opus). After that, it has been iPad, Dell Streak and Samsung Galaxy Tab.
I'm considering Notion Ink Adam. And I'll certainly take a look at the 7" unit from Dell and iPad 2.
I'm not sure yet, whether I'll stop purchasing ePaper readers entirely. But I'll definitely reduce my shopping frenzy drastically. Since summer of 2007, on average I've bought 1 ePaper reader every 4 to 6 weeks. I've got more or less all the file formats, display sizes, touchscreen variations, ...
If I buy another ePaper reader, it has to offer something entirely new.
I didn't got for the new Sony readers or the new PocketBook readers for the very same reason.
From what I've read, I don't find any "must have" reason for the Kobo reader, compared to Kindle, nook or Sony for example...

[astra]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I'll certainly take a look at iPad 2

Is there iPad 2?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by astra

Is there iPad 2?

(Massive) rumor has it, it will be presented in about 6 weeks.
Some pics of covers and things like that have been leaked.
A bigger/better speaker seems likely.
Depth is rumored to be 2mm less.
There have been rumors about pre-installed SIM card as well - no need to choose a provider in advance. Just activating on demand.

And who knows? Maybe there will be 2 versions? 10" and 7" maybe?

I guess, they'll have taken intense looks at Android.
Hopefully, they port some gimmicks:
- Uninstall & refund. I love, testing Android apps and getting a full refund if I want to.
- Additional keyboards. "Swype" beats the Apple keyboard hands down.
- I love the capacitive buttons. Always having the context menu a single push of a button away. Hate the physical Apple home button.
- I hate the "multitasking" of iOS. Each application per se goes into the background, you manually have to close it. On Android, you choose whether to close or multi-task via different capacitive buttons.
- Love the desktop widgets on Android. Checking Engadget "on the fly", directly on the desktop, for example.
- Like the various themes. Dell's desktop is entirely different from Samsung's for example.

[Polyglot27]

Originally Posted by zeppo

Hello, MGMueller

You seem like the perfect person to ask...

I am interested in an eink-reader for three things (no particular order):

1) Read books in Spanish with which I can easily translate passages to English

2) Read classic literature (in English)

3) Have easy access to dictionary definitions of words. With regular books I most often just skip them and assume I'm getting the gist, and in many cases this is true-- but this feature would really add precision to my vocabulary. I only wish it had been so easy when I was growing up!


I picked up Nook on sale for $99 (reg $149).
I also have been tipped off that a Kindle is heading my way as a Christmas gift (wont be a problem to return if necessary.)
These seem to be the two leaders anyway, but perhaps there's a better choice out there for my needs.

Seems to me a touch screen would be big advantage here, but maybe not-- that is, maybe a joystick is not much trouble. I believe the Kindle has wikipedia access as wifi??? That would also be useful, much like the dictionary.

Hi, I think the Sony PRS-650 is the answer to all the above requirements. I have had one for 3 months now. It has a good Spanish-English dictionary built in (in addition to French, German and Italian) and the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. This dictionary is almost like a small encyclopedia since it also has names of people and places listed, unlike other "dictionaries" which exclude all proper names. So it is very good for reading English classics because you can even look up information about people and places. The touch screen is a big plus too because you can simply tap the word on the screen twice and a window will open at the bottom of the page. This really beat moving the cursor to the word by repeatedly pressing on the direction buttons (like on my Cybook).

[carpetmojo]

Dear Mr. Mgweuller ,
Just a thought..............
It would almost be cost effective to hire someone to read books to you when required.

And I've never shared a drink and pleasant coversation with my PRS650 yet - although I have spilt wine and shouted at it before now..............

[wolke0178]

Hallo mgmueller,

ich bin seit geraumer Zeit heimlicher Mitleser, habe Sie leider erst vorige Woche entdeckt und mich köstlich über ihre Sammlung amüsiert (... ja, bin beim 4. Reader gelandet, meine Kollegen guggen schon komisch ... Freak? ... nein, es gibt ja Sie ... Danke!)

Und jetzt meine Frage: Warum trennen Sie sich nicht von weniger geliebten Teilchen?

Freue mich auf Ihre Antwort ... und weiter so!

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by wolke0178

Hallo mgmueller,

ich bin seit geraumer Zeit heimlicher Mitleser, habe Sie leider erst vorige Woche entdeckt und mich köstlich über ihre Sammlung amüsiert (... ja, bin beim 4. Reader gelandet, meine Kollegen guggen schon komisch ... Freak? ... nein, es gibt ja Sie ... Danke!)

Und jetzt meine Frage: Warum trennen Sie sich nicht von weniger geliebten Teilchen?

Freue mich auf Ihre Antwort ... und weiter so!

Hallo Wolke,
Ich habe schon immer gesammelt.
Im Keller habe ich ca. 8.000 Comics.
In meinen Schränken ca. 700 DVDs usw.
Das Alles werde ich nie mehr anfassen, DVDs sind z.B. längst durch AppleTV ersetzt (BlueRay interessiert mich nicht, keine physischen Medien mehr, bitte).
Ich habe mich noch nie von meinen "Altbeständen" getrennt.
Was würde ich wohl für 5 "ausgemusterte" Reader noch bekommen? Wahrscheinlich noch nicht einmal genug, um vom Erlös das iPad2 zu kaufen.
Dann doch lieber die Erinnerung pflegen und mich immer wieder mal an einem alten Gadget erfreuen.
Unlängst habe ich einen halben Nachmittag mit meiner PSP1000 zugebracht, hat kurzzeitig wieder Spaß gemacht...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Dear Mr. Mgweuller ,
Just a thought..............
It would almost be cost effective to hire someone to read books to you when required.

And I've never shared a drink and pleasant coversation with my PRS650 yet - although I have spilt wine and shouted at it before now..............

Hobbies and cost effectiveness - interesting and kind of a new thought...
And by the way: I spend way more on eBooks than on my readers. I guess it's about 5 to 10 times as much.
I've bought about 300 to 500 eBooks of most formats.
Does it make sense? Probably not, I could lend them from the library for free.
But as I've said before: Collecting gadgets of any kind still is cheaper than what many spend on their car for example.

And just a thought: I hate audiobooks. I'd certainly hate someone reading to me as well. ;-)

[TheArtfulDodger]

Any recent rumblings about a Color Kindle? I've given up on the Color Nook - they are far too protective of it IMO!

Sparky

[mike0liver]

I may be wrong but I suspect the problem is with battery life. eBook Readers really need a long battery life and I think the technology to provide colour needs the screen to be backlit - which sucks power like a drain.

Have you thought of looking at the Archos range to see whether they have something that might answer your needs? I also think that the John Lewis Partnership in the UK were offering colour machines (but without the long battery life of B&W eReaders) at about £75 ($100?).

Cheers,

Mike

[JerseyBiker]

Originally Posted by TheArtfulDodger

Any recent rumblings about a Color Kindle? I've given up on the Color Nook - they are far too protective of it IMO!

Sparky

I have an original Nook and the Nook color never appealed to me. I bought an ereader to read books and my Nook does that well. If I wanted all of the other features that the Nook Color provides I would just go all the way and get a tablet. Anyway what do you mean about them being too protective of the Nook Color?

~eddie