Will Kobo, Nook and Amazon Touch kill Sony?

[Poppaea]

Not only to sell under price but also to invest Millions in commercials to be able to do so is what has been asked for here. I am still waiting for someone to tell me how this equates to business sense...

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

I don't believe that it is reasonable to expect that the Sonys should be sold at the same price as the much more cheaply built Nook and Kobo.

The hardware specs on the new Nook and Kobo are the same as the current Sonys: Pearl E-ink Screen, Neonode IR touch. The processors may be different but they let's assume they are all "pretty fast." The Nook and Kobo have a wireless transmitter inside, the 650 does not.

So in what way are the Nook and Kobo devices more cheaply built? Because they have a plastic bezel instead of aluminum? How much of a price difference do you think that is, in terms of the parts? Aluminum costs more than a wireless transmitter?

eP

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Do you have any reliable and current figures? The figures I have seen are from around 2001/2002.

There you go ...

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUK22795511

And I believe the article is mentioning readers sales not ebook sales. I think no company reveals true numbers about ebook sales at this moment (B&N, Sony, Apple, Amazon, etc), just a rounded number which is deceiving and not good for statistics. But retailers can provide exact numbers of readers which were sold. After all, numbers of readers sold are a good indicator of how many ebooks you also sold.

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I don't think Sony is taking a principled stand on offering a premium reader for a premium price-- I think that Sony is just loosing a price war-- badly.

I agree.

The argument than pricey equals quality is a psychological one. That is not always true. As a matter of fact, the opposite happens as well (not on this case of course) So people started to realize that they can get similar devices for a lower price and enjoy their ebooks too. Look at Amazon again. 1st Kindle was around $400 USA dollars. Now the Kindle 3G is being sold for $180 I think. They were smart and have adjusted their prices according to the market, supported by a strong ad campaign. Even my brother who lives in South America knows about the Kindle but has no idea about the others.

In my opinion, the ereader market is like the music market on lot of ways. Companies won't make as much selling mp3 players or CD players as selling music. The only exception to this could be Apple with their iPod, but still, I believe they make more money with their music store where you can sell and resell the same mp3 files that paid rights already and is being hosted virtually on a website. A player is hardware, can only being sold new, one time only.

Now you can get nice tablets for about $300 or $400 and they are nice. Why would you spend the same for an eink reader when you can buy two similar devices for half the price?

[CommonReader]

Comparing "specs" only gets you so far. You may just as well compare paintings by the amount of paint on the canvas. Same amount of paint on canvas = same value, yet one painting is the feeble attempt of your dilettante aunt Mabel and the other one is a Vermeer.
Two devices may share the same specs, yet one is a delight to use and the other one is just run of the mill stuff.
I do not want to talk down the Nook or the Kobo, as I haven't used either, yet the Sony is a beautifully executed work of art. If your simple comparison of specs were the only reason for market success, then the Swiss watch industry would be dead, because any 10 € watch from China tells you the time as well as a 20,000 € Swiss watch. Yet the Swiss have no trouble selling their watches.
BTW, to argue with "production costs" is meaningless - and we all know it. Apart from that I wonder why people forget that the 650 is also a very usable mp3-player, e.g. for audio books. For me that is of much more practical use than wifi.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by jocampo

The argument than pricey equals quality is a psychological one. That is not always true.

Also, I think there is an element of justification/fanboyism involved. You (and by "you" I mean "a buyer in general") like your Sony, but your Sony cost much more than almost every other reader on the market the same size-- so you try to find reasons to justify that price difference post-hoc. I see that aluminum prices fluctuate, but stay reasonably close to $1.00 a pound. I don't know what percentage of the PRS-650's 7.58 oz weight is the aluminum case, but let's be generous and call it 2 ounces. That means that-- at today's price-- there is around 15 cents worth of aluminum in the PRS-650. Let's be very generous and say that the actual process of mass-producing injection-molded aluminum cases is more expensive than that for mass-producing injection-molded plastic cases, and it brings the production cost difference between making a plastic-cased Sony and an aluminum-cased Sony to a whole $1.00. How does that $1.00 production cost difference translate into a $50 to $100 MSRP difference on the reader?

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Actually, the point above is something that COULD sway me toward another reader eventually. I do the same: I can't read an epub until I've "fixed it up." But I don't do the fixing up for fun and sport, I would rather not do it at all. There's no reason that a) an epub shouldn't look great on the reader in the first place and b) I can't change fonts, sizes, margins, indents, line spacing, etc. on the reader. If a reader comes out that does those things, I might switch.

I totally agree.

I'm picky, perhaps anal, about the formatting. Mostly though I just want to be able to comfortably read a book for hours on end, and to do that I'm FORCED (by my middleaged eyes) to modify my eBooks with a better font, and all the other text formatting that should be available on a reader but to my knowledge is not fully implemented on any eInk reader. Some of the reader apps for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, PalmOS, WM, BB OS, etc. come closer, but dedicated eInk readers are very lacking in text formatting/customization capability. I think most of the problem is that dedicated eInk readers are designed by book store companies more interested in selling books than creating a truly versatile reader.

Originally Posted by John F;1554977I think the Nook Touch (if it is like the Nook and Nook color) will have [I

some[/I] customization (margins, spacing, ...).

The nookcolor has very little text customization, but more than the typical dedicated eInk reader and definitely more than the Sonys. But one major ommission is that the nookcolor does not have a landscape reading mode for ePubs. I've heard rumors that the Nook STR won't support landscape either, but cannot find any confirmation. This would be a serious ommission as it is with the nookcolor.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

The hardware specs on the new Nook and Kobo are the same as the current Sonys: Pearl E-ink Screen, Neonode IR touch. The processors may be different but they let's assume they are all "pretty fast." The Nook and Kobo have a wireless transmitter inside, the 650 does not.

So in what way are the Nook and Kobo devices more cheaply built? Because they have a plastic bezel instead of aluminum? How much of a price difference do you think that is, in terms of the parts? Aluminum costs more than a wireless transmitter?

eP

Let's use laptops as an example...
Let's say you had a $400 laptop and a $450 laptop. Both similar specs. But the $400 laptop comes with Vista and the $450 comes with Windows 7. You'd buy the $450 laptop with Windows 7.

Now, what we know is that the software on the 650 is good. ADE works well. The interface is good. But we do not know the system software on the nook or Kobo. We don not know how good ADE is. So for all we know, the 650 could still be better even though the specs on the others are similar. We won't know this until after these two devices are released and people can actually go to stores and try them in person.

[elcreative]

What eReaders are you comparing at $300-$400?

Originally Posted by jocampo

Now you can get nice tablets for about $300 or $400 and they are nice. Why would you spend the same for an eink reader when you can buy two similar devices for half the price?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by elcreative

What eReaders are you comparing at $300-$400?

Sony PRS-950 and Kindle DXG come to mind.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Let's use laptops as an example...
Let's say you had a $400 laptop and a $450 laptop. Both similar specs. But the $400 laptop comes with Vista and the $450 comes with Windows 7. You'd buy the $450 laptop with Windows 7.

There is a 12.5% price difference between the $400 and the $450 laptop. There is a 77% price difference between MSRP on the PRS-650 and the new Kobo. Would you still make the same laptop choice if it were $400 vs $708?

A lot of talk/argument here about whether Sony readers are built better. Perhaps. I've owned the 300, 600, 900, 350, and 950 at one time or another, and I've owned several other brands. Sonys might be put together a bit better, but to my knowledge the Kindles and others hold up over years of use as well as the Sonys. You can bullet proof a reader, but why is it necessary? A reader only has to have a certain level of durability, and once you go beyond that level it is a waste of money. In my opinion, all the major brands of readers sold in the USA have attained that level and will survive above normal wear and tear as well as the Sonys. The "tough built" argument for Sonys is therefore of no value to me. Save the "tough built" argument for pickup trucks.

I also see a few dreaming of Sony price cuts. You have met Sony, haven't you? Price cuts are two words rarely used by Sony in the same sentence, and almost exclusively for products that or near end of life or close to being updated by a newer model.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

There is a 12.5% price difference between the $400 and the $450 laptop. There is a 77% price difference between MSRP on the PRS-650 and the new Kobo. Would you still make the same laptop choice if it were $400 vs $708?

If I had to choose based on past history, I would go with Sony. Kobo's ADE in the other two readers is buggy and the bugs have been pointed out and have not been fixed. These are some serious bugs. Sony's ADE works well.

When I bought my 650, I got a free light cover so that dropped the total price down.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Also, I think there is an element of justification/fanboyism involved. You (and by "you" I mean "a buyer in general") like your Sony, but your Sony cost much more than almost every other reader on the market the same size-- so you try to find reasons to justify that price difference post-hoc. I see that aluminum prices fluctuate, but stay reasonably close to $1.00 a pound. I don't know what percentage of the PRS-650's 7.58 oz weight is the aluminum case, but let's be generous and call it 2 ounces. That means that-- at today's price-- there is around 15 cents worth of aluminum in the PRS-650. Let's be very generous and say that the actual process of mass-producing injection-molded aluminum cases is more expensive than that for mass-producing injection-molded plastic cases, and it brings the production cost difference between making a plastic-cased Sony and an aluminum-cased Sony to a whole $1.00. How does that $1.00 production cost difference translate into a $50 to $100 MSRP difference on the reader?

Oh, my. You would probably try to argue that a Ferrari should cost less than a Ford truck because they needed less steel to build it. If cost of material were the decisive point then none of these readers should cost more than a couple of €. Obviously, if it's all a matter of getting something "good enough" and to save some money then it will work for you.