What would make Kobo surpass Kindle?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by rcentros

You used to be able to go into a Best Buy and pick up a Nook, Kindle, Sony or Kobo. Even Target allowed you to choose Kindle, Nook and Sony.

Ah well ... "progress."

Or Walmart. They used to have Nook and Kindles. Just until shortly before the first PW came out.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm not sure that security is necessarily the main consideration, it's more a case of taking control of one's own books and the access to them, rather than relying on some corporate entity's dreadful software. I can only speak for myself but my personal cloud storage is merely a convenient means to an end. I don't rely on it as my sole backup.

I have a small personal cloud (100 Go) mostly for frequent encrypted back-ups of the encrypted partition in my PC (10 Go, 5 Go free, some 300 Ko zipped, and for sharing photos or other data too big to send via emails. When on the go, AND with at least 3G connections, I occasionally use it to backup holiday photos, but it's usually a pain, and I carry an external hard drive.

The reason I won't use Microsoft or such clouds is I don't trust them. I don't know what they will do with my data, and the way all of them obfuscate what is going on and how to control one's data. All those sites making you accept unreadable Terms of Agreement before you can do anything (and telling you they can change it whenever they want, and you should check them regularly..). What is called in France a "contrat léonin" - a lion's contract, which has no validity because it is one-sided.

And of course I backup my data often, with one set hard drives off-site (and all my hard drives are encrypted of course).

Incidentally my encryption codes are randomly generated lines of characters.

[Richwood]

Originally Posted by Celestial

IMO, Kobo's main problem is that there are quite a few Amazon Kindle exclusive authors, at least in the U.S. Now for people that know how to convert and side-load, that's not an issue. But that's an extremely small group.

To make the Kobo eReader more attractive, they're going to have to give authors incentives to make their work available for sale on Kobo itself in addition to Amazon Kindle.

Per one quite successful LGBT author I have communicated with, she told me that she uses two outlets for her ebooks, Amazon and Smashwords. Smashwords does distribute to other sellers such as the Kobo bookstore, B&N and others so her ebooks are widely available from multiple sources.

I have not visited Canada where Kobo is quite successful but I believe they distribute through Best Buy and other retailers. They have circa 25% of the ereader market there and in New Zealand. In the USA it is less than 1% and in GB less than 2%. About 6% in Australia. They are almost non-existent in the two largest English Language ebook markets in the world. IMO apparently they have given up in those markets.

They need to aggressively make agreements with sellers like Best Buy, Staples and Walmart in the USA as well as independent booksellers if they want to get a decent market share IMO. I ordered the 32 MB Kobo Aura One from Kobo on 25 Dec and it is due for delivery on 4 January which will be the tenth day from my order, including the order day. In contrast a Kindle that is in stock shows up in 2 days or I can drive to Best Buy and buy it immediately.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Or Walmart. They used to have Nook and Kindles. Just until shortly before the first PW came out.

I think Staples and Office Depot had both Kindles and Nooks at one time. (Maybe Sonys and Kobos?) Now I think only Staples has Kindles, Office Depot just has tablets.

[ma678]

I wish Kobo would add native support to Chinese readers. Why does Kobo ignore such a big market?!

[Richwood]

IMO Kobo desperately needs to improve their customer service. Compared to Amazon it sucks. I just received a Kobo Aura One 32 GB Limited Edition unit with not functioning wi-fi a week ago. Promptly contacted tech support and we went through the wi-fi hookup multiple times with my reading back the error message. I have 4 other Kobo readers which hooked up and registered perfectly. After contacting Kobo they sent an email asking for all my personal info which they already had from the order I placed. I filled it in and returned the email. Received two emails asking if I was satisfied and stating the ticket would be closed if no response in 10 days.

Contacted tech support again this morning, a week after the original contact. Asked me for copies of the original Kobo order response email ad the shipping email as well as a photo of the failure message screen even though I had read the screen to the tech support representative originally. I do not own a working digital camera! Feel like being given the run around. Kobo asking for info they already have on file. I was also told that a email asking for additional ifo had been sent that I never received.

Filled out a Kobo incident report and contacted a different Kobo rep. Explained my problems and she claims that she will expedite the return and replacement process. I have spent literally a couple of hours on the phone and feel like been given the run arond. Kobo makes returns a PITA compared to my Amazon experiences. Totally not competitive customer service and response time.

If Kobo wants to compete with Amazon they need to improve their customer response time and simplify the process which they make much more difficult than needed. Why do they need me to send copies to them of order emails they originally sent me in the first place and why want a screen shot of the same error message I read to their technical support representative? To me Kobo makes the return process for a defective Ereader a pain in the butt!

[vostro]

Originally Posted by ma678

Why does Kobo ignore such a big market?!

the management team or its mother company has no such vision, so never put too much hope on hopeless company.

[MaggieScratch]

Speaking for myself, the killer apps on my Kobo Aura One are the OverDrive integration and Pocket integration--the latter especially as when I'm reading long articles on my phone, I sometimes quickly save them to Pocket for the more comfortable reading experience of the KA1.

I don't really mind sideloading (and I had to as I have a large Nook library as well as books from other indie companies--pouring one out for Fictionwise) but would LOVE the ability to email books to my account and have them sync across devices. LOVE. I'm basically only posting this in case someone from Kobo reads this.

As to the original question of the post: what would it take for Kobo to make inroads into the U.S.? I'm not sure they can. I think most people want their devices to Just Work and at this point, all of the devices work well enough for most people. And Kindle has the ecosystem. The Kindle exclusives probably hurt, too...I really only bought a Kindle (Paperwhite, on sale before Christmas a year ago) for books that are exclusive to Kindle. I know I could deDRM, convert, sideload, blah de blah, but when I could buy a decent Kindle for $99, why bother? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

But if Kobo asked my advice for improving their marketing in the U.S., I'd say sell the capabilities such as library access and Pocket. And put integrated OverDrive on ALL the devices (unless they've done that already when I wasn't paying attention). Those are the two things that really separate them from Amazon IMO.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ma678

I wish Kobo would add native support to Chinese readers. Why does Kobo ignore such a big market?!

Originally Posted by vostro

the management team or its mother company has no such vision, so never put too much hope on hopeless company.

Considering the nature of the Chinese market? That Amazon had to make a deal with China Mobile to allow shopping at the Migu store? That while hard numbers are hard to find, the Chinese ereader market has shrunk by 65% since 2011? See this article Article in Chinese. The ebook market is growing but ereader sales are plunging like a paralyzed falcon.

[rcentros]

Apparently Walmart and Rakutan/Kobo have come to an agreement where Kobos (and Kobo eBooks) will soon be sold by Walmart online and in their stores. Now they can talk about the possibility of actually surpassing Amazon.

See the news thread ... here ...

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=294231

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by MaggieScratch

Speaking for myself, the killer apps on my Kobo Aura One are the OverDrive integration and Pocket integration--the latter especially as when I'm reading long articles on my phone, I sometimes quickly save them to Pocket for the more comfortable reading experience of the KA1.

I said it in the news thread and I'll say it here: now is the time for Kobo to roll out a firmware update offering the Aura One's integrated Overdrive for all their models. Then make a big deal about it when they start selling at Walmart.

[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I said it in the news thread and I'll say it here: now is the time for Kobo to roll out a firmware update offering the Aura One's integrated Overdrive for all their models. Then make a big deal about it when they start selling at Walmart.

Totally agree. They have to push what differentiates them from Kindle.

And I forgot a couple of things in my post above: you can use Ebates to get a small rebate when you buy books from Kobo (though you have to buy them on the website rather than from the device, but it all syncs wirelessly so not that big of a deal) as Rakuten owns Ebates as well.

Also, the VIP rewards are totally worth it if you buy a lot of books, especially books from indies and small companies as you can get discounts and free books with rewards points. They don't work for the Big 4, unfortunately, but I'm always kind of surprised at how many books I can get discounts or redeem points for.

All of these things are great selling points for Kobo as a service, over and above the devices.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by MaggieScratch

Totally agree. They have to push what differentiates them from Kindle.

In the US the integrated Overdrive wouldn't separate them from Kindle, but it would put them on even footing. Kindles can check out books from the library and Amazon loads the book on the device.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

In the US the integrated Overdrive wouldn't separate them from Kindle, but it would put them on even footing. Kindles can check out books from the library and Amazon loads the book on the device.

Yep. And it seems like it would be doable because the same company who owns Kobo also owns Overdrive. I can easily see three different options when borrowing a book ... ePub, Kindle and Kobo – pick "Kobo" and you get a link to the Kobo site for the download (like they now do with Kindle).

[Maverynthia]

Send to Kobo function, adding the microSD BACK to the h2o. It's one of the reason I bought the tablet is that if was much cheaper than the Oasis, had a microSD slot and a backlite.