What would make Kobo surpass Kindle?

[Tony1988]

Originally Posted by John F

Bro, that is called the mean.

Okay,

[meeera]

Originally Posted by llcj

Average life expectancy for males born in Canada in 2012 is 80 years and for females born in Canada in 2012 is 84. For Australians, it's something like a year longer for each.

For Australian woman in my State, it's 84.8. I've never smoked, drink lightly, come from a relatively privileged background, and am currently cancer-free as far as that can be determined, so who knows?

[dordale]

Also as Cinisajoy alluded to in an earlier post life expectancy is the average of everyone in the population infants to elderly. Some infants will unfortunately die and some people will die at a younger age--lowering the average. So as we age, our life expectancy increases. As Tony stated, the average life expectancy in the U.S. (where I live) is 78.4 years. But, at age 55, my life expectancy is 85.5 years--calculated using the calculator provided by the US Socials Security Administration calculator.

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/population/longevity.html

Just noticed that sjfan pretty much said the above in an earlier post :-)

[TuxGirl]

Personally, I prefer the Kindle ecosystem, but I prefer Kobo devices.

I had Kindles from 2007-2017, and have only had a Kobo for a few months. I wish I could easily pull my entire library over to my Kobo library, and have it behave native (downloading from cloud, etc). That's really my main complaint...

In terms of what they need to do, I think marketing is 90% of their issue. 99% of people in my area have no idea what a Kobo is. The tech guy for my library had vaguely heard of them, but mine was the first he had ever seen. People here generally have heard that the nook is swirling the drain, and they think the only other option is the Kindle.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by TuxGirl

Personally, I prefer the Kindle ecosystem, but I prefer Kobo devices.

I had Kindles from 2007-2017, and have only had a Kobo for a few months. I wish I could easily pull my entire library over to my Kobo library, and have it behave native (downloading from cloud, etc). That's really my main complaint...

In terms of what they need to do, I think marketing is 90% of their issue. 99% of people in my area have no idea what a Kobo is. The tech guy for my library had vaguely heard of them, but mine was the first he had ever seen. People here generally have heard that the nook is swirling the drain, and they think the only other option is the Kindle.

Calibre.

[PeterT]

What they need to do? FIX LONGSTANDING ISSUES / BUGS

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by TuxGirl

Personally, I prefer the Kindle ecosystem, but I prefer Kobo devices.

I had Kindles from 2007-2017, and have only had a Kobo for a few months. I wish I could easily pull my entire library over to my Kobo library, and have it behave native (downloading from cloud, etc). That's really my main complaint...

In terms of what they need to do, I think marketing is 90% of their issue. 99% of people in my area have no idea what a Kobo is. The tech guy for my library had vaguely heard of them, but mine was the first he had ever seen. People here generally have heard that the nook is swirling the drain, and they think the only other option is the Kindle.

Yeah, Kobo is a non-entity in the US. I wonder if we would all be better off if e-readers were just more expensive and weren't locked in to their own ecosystems?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yeah, Kobo is a non-entity in the US. I wonder if we would all be better off if e-readers were just more expensive and weren't locked in to their own ecosystems?

Probably not. Oh let's see Joe builds ereader. Joe has no ebooks. Customers have to look high and low. Oops, Joe is now sitting in front of the Walmart parking lot holding a sign.
Hey, if it would have worked Sharper Image would not be out of business.
They tried that. I think the ereader was $400 when it came out and even came with an SD card loaded with books. I have one around here somewhere (without the SD card), To tell you how popular they were move the decimal two places to the left for the price I paid.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yeah, Kobo is a non-entity in the US. I wonder if we would all be better off if e-readers were just more expensive and weren't locked in to their own ecosystems?

I'm guessing there wouldn't be nearly as many people reading eBooks on eReaders.

[Pizza_Cant_Read]

I am willing to pay an arm and a leg for the best ereader available. What I don't want to do is repurchase the same book every time I switch readers (ecosystems).

I don't have a permanent repository for physical books and have been forced to part with thousands of physical books over just a decade(not always purchased brand new, also includes used books such as garage sale books, dude selling books on the sidewalk in random countries, books I got for free etc). For the most part, it was without hard feelings because I know possessions come and go. I would live in houses and then later reduce my possessions back to only what I can fit in a backpack. I collected ebooks then too, but rarely used them.

I love dedicated ereaders because they utilize a very 'book-like' display and Amazon wins because they make it easy for me to browse and make impulse purchases with the one-click button. My only issue with them now is I have been trying to move to a Chinese card which is having problems so one-click doesn't work and I think I owe them some money which I will get around to fixing eventually

To veer off topic: I don't use Kindle Unlimited expressly because I want to own and backup my files and do feel that if you have the means it is unethical to not pay the author/publisher for their labor. I understand that if everyone pirated everything then authors wouldn't have the means to continue producing. Anything I have pirated is something I wouldn't pay more than 25 cents for at a garage sale. I do my best to be really honest with myself and try to frame my actions as categorical imperatives and how I live my life. I might consider Kindle Unlimited if I read more periodicals, content that I don't care about keeping.

I am not a rich guy at all but will gladly pay anything for the best reading experience with the ability to side-load books, guaranteeing the portability of my archive. It is silly to frame "The Sword of Shannara" as an important piece of literature but at the same time reducing our expectation for the lifespan of a book simply because it changed formats (same as allowing the legal reduction of our expectations to civil liberties) we in turn encourage vendor lock in and in the case of exercising civil rights, we are telling our governments that we don't really care that much about those things our foremothers and forefathers fought for. I know I am not the mainstream consumer and am content to be at the fringes. I am also the guy who requests a pat down instead of using the full body scanner. Mostly just on principle. Not because full body scanners are the end of the world or I have anything to hide, mostly just because I can.

To get back on topic, I would buy the next Kobo device if it got me a step closer to keeping my entire archive in a manageable form on a single device.

Didn't mean to start a discussion on the ethics of ebook licensing or anything. I read the last few pages of this thread and it was sufficiently interesting that I wanted to share my personal perspective, what I search for in an ebook reader and what would make me switch devices.

-pcr

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Probably not. Oh let's see Joe builds ereader. Joe has no ebooks. Customers have to look high and low. Oops, Joe is now sitting in front of the Walmart parking lot holding a sign.
Hey, if it would have worked Sharper Image would not be out of business.
They tried that. I think the ereader was $400 when it came out and even came with an SD card loaded with books. I have one around here somewhere (without the SD card), To tell you how popular they were move the decimal two places to the left for the price I paid.

You lack vision. MP3s purchased from Amazon aren't tied to a device.

Tablets allow people to read Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Gutenberg books all on the same device. I guess nobody reads on a tablet.

When the Nook was genuine competition with the Kindle, they were selling for $260.00. B&N, Amazon and Sony were all competing and others were preparing to throw their hats in the ring.

When B&N drastically cut their price and Amazon matched it, the e-reader market dried up.

[ZodWallop]

I admit that I got lost in your post. Anyway, this struck me:

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

Anything I have pirated is something I wouldn't pay more than 25 cents for at a garage sale.

If you wouldn't pay 25 cents for it, why keep it around at all?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You lack vision. MP3s purchased from Amazon aren't tied to a device.

Tablets allow people to read Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Gutenberg books all on the same device. I guess nobody reads on a tablet.

When the Nook was genuine competition with the Kindle, they were selling for $260.00. B&N, Amazon and Sony were all competing and others were preparing to throw their hats in the ring.

When B&N drastically cut their price and Amazon matched it, the e-reader market dried up.

Please reread my post. There was a non store ereader. It failed miserably.
Sony, Nook, Amazon and Kobos all have stores.

So no. It did not work. It has already been tried. Oh wait, there are some very expensive non-store ereaders. Check the Onyx and Pocketbook forums.

Here is the thing: ereaders are niche and 99% of the customers want easy.
Yes, but a tablet is not an ereader. They are two different animals.
Last year, there were over a billion tablets and smartphones. There were only 75,000,000 ereaders.
Niche man niche.

[Pizza_Cant_Read]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I admit that I got lost in your post. Anyway, this struck me:



If you wouldn't pay 25 cents for it, why keep it around at all?

The simple answer is why not?

I suppose most of the time it is the same as with anyone who gets things they don't need. I know that is the case when I book shop at thrift stores. Other times the reasoning might be because I have already purchased multiple copies of the same book. I know you and others may not agree with me and I surely don't intend to carry on a conversation about the ethics of the situation. Just giving you the respect of a response :-)

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Calibre.

Yes, but not as convenient as native.