Sony: E-readers 'selling out around the world'

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

Agreed.

I'll also add that for all the kvetching that "sony doesn't know how to do marketing," they sure seem to know how to market Playstations.

Sony is choosing not to invest marketing dollars in the e-readers. Given that they know the ins and outs of their business far better than anyone on MR, I have to assume they know what they're doing, and that their lack of effort on marketing the Readers in the USA is a deliberately chosen path.

I agree. Sony is a major corporation. They must have a strategic plan for all of their product lines. Hopefully they have planned their R&D appropriately (and made the correct assumptions) for where the future market is headed so that they remain competitive.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by RSaunders

The real question is "How many more Sony readers would be bought if they marketed them?". I suspect the answer is "none". Amazon has bought all the eInk screens that can be made, and subsidizes Kindle sales because they have a good online store.

That's exactly the reason.
As for Amazon subsidizing the Kindle, I don't think that's what happens. It seems they get a nice break on the screen price (rumor has it they pay $36 for a Pearl screen) because they order a huge amount of them. It's just the economy of scale.