What does the new Kindle and its price point mean ...

[jezebel]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

We're already seeing competitors fall by the wayside almost weekly; Cool-er, iRex, Que, and most recently Foxit. The blood-letting started after Nook WiFi came in at US$149 ...

This is scary for the companies I'm sure, and a little worrisome for consumers, too. One of the questions I (try to) consider when making a purchase is "will there be customer support for this down the road?" I want the smaller companies to thrive, I want to buy a PB360, I want to support small businesses, but I want to be able to get the most out of whatever I buy for the longest time possible.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by jezebel

This is scary for the companies I'm sure, and a little worrisome for consumers, too. One of the questions I (try to) consider when making a purchase is "will there be customer support for this down the road?" I want the smaller companies to thrive, I want to buy a PB360, I want to support small businesses, but I want to be able to get the most out of whatever I buy for the longest time possible.

Don't be afraid, we will be around and not afraid to face the biggies.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Don't be afraid, we will be around and not afraid to face the biggies.

Good to hear.
Competitors compete.
The podium has room for multiple winners.

[jezebel]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Don't be afraid, we will be around and not afraid to face the biggies.

glad to hear it!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by rblover

The Pocketbook has 64MB of RAM, NO text to speech capability, AND costs $90.00 more than a Kindle...and I should buy it why?

PocketBook is not linked to your creditcard.
PocketBook company can not see what you are reading. They do not delete content from your device regularly (*).

With Kindle you can use any font you wish, as long as it is Caecilia.
You have to hack your Kindle to make even a fraction of configurations and improvements that PocketBook provides "out-of-the-box". Oh! Did I mention Amazon can see what is on your device and they have your Kindle linked to your creditcard?(**)

(*) I am not talking about the 1984 book they deleted. I am talking about older issues of newspapers that get downloaded to your Kindle every morning, so Amazon DOES have infrastructure in place to mess with your files. They also read logs from your device and update firmware automatically.
Remember, if you have infrastructure in place that can be abused, it WILL be abused sooner or later. Do you remember those anti-terrorists laws that were passed in Great Britain. Those that were very soon used to seize property of ordinary Iceland citizens?

(**) Yes. You can disable 3G and WiFi (or so they claim), but now you have lots of features you paid for and you had to disable.

[mikaelalind]

I think the suggestion to negiotate with Walmart is a good one. I also think Pocketbook global should negiotate with a big European chain. Why? Since the prices need to come down. I admit right now I am really tempted by the new kindle.

If my Sony 505 stopped working, I could get a Sony Pocket reader for 199 euro, or a Touch for 270 euro. A Cybook Opus cost 270-300 euro in Sweden.
Or I could import a Kindle 3 WIFI and pay 150 euro.
I wont by a Kindle, since I get a lot of my books from the library. I'll probably get a PB or a Bebook. Still, I am not there yet.

[mysweety]

Amazon.com or co.uk is not the only provider of books in the world. There are plenty of books in French/German/Spanish/Russian etc. There are plenty of books even in English from start-up authors who are only too happy to sell/give you their work, usually geographic restriction free and drm free and are a pleasure to read. Soon any author worth his salt will be only too happy to put a copy of work out of print on the net as a sampler so you can be tempted to buy his latest offering.
Personally I prefer not to buy stuff with geographic restrictions and which is drm. If I really want it I can easily find it on the second-hand market. So these restrictions drive readers into the used book market where neither publisher nor author receives any money at all. If that isn't cutting off your nose to spite your face what is? So let's not worry too much about the likes of kindle and amazon. PB360 is a great device because it's super ergonomic and has never fallen down on me and reads pdf stuff just about OK but better than most others. I for one will stick with it for a good while.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by kacir

With Kindle you can use any font you wish, as long as it is Caecilia.
You have to hack your Kindle to make even a fraction of configurations and improvements that PocketBook provides "out-of-the-box".

Amazon has been incrementally improving their firmware, and it is now (on the Kindle 3) clearly the best of the mainstream US vendors. It is still behind PocketBook in capabilities in most areas, but PocketBook has put very little work into its Adobe ePub implementation. For example, many devices allow users to override an ePub's CSS when using mobile ADE but no PocketBook device allows this. I am in favor of a DRM-free world, but PocketBook requires you to remove DRM to get at the full capabilities of the device.

PocketBook probably does have to compete on features, not price, but this is difficult ground to defend in the long term. The hardware needs to be above average too, with the 360° and the 901 being good examples. So far the 6" models have been very pedestrian. If I was at PocketBook I would be championing a 360° refresh with a Pearl screen and 16 greyscales to compete against the Kindle 3, and larger screen devices to fill niches that Amazon has not quite satisfied with the Kindle DX.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Amazon has been incrementally improving their firmware, and it is now (on the Kindle 3) clearly the best of the mainstream US vendors.

They *have* addressed most of my concerns (at least partially) except for arbitrary Truetype font support. But they do let you set margins and line spacing, choose a font size from a reasonable range of settings. You can even hide the status bar for a clean screen look.
They are nowhere near as flexible as FBReader180 but they compare well to the baseline FBReader and are ahead of ADE. And they have Audible Audiobook support, TTS, and audible menus which few if any other readers offer.
They may not be the best for everybody but they are good enough for a whole *lot* of people. And that is without factoring price or the built-in storefront.

The thing about competing with Kindle at this point in time is that they are *not* trying to be all things to all people. They are merely aiming to be the 80% solution. Which leaves ample room for savvy competitors.

Yes, a PB360 refresh would do extremely well against K3.
So would a 901/903 combo.
Other segments, though, could be tricky; added hardware features need to be carefully weighed to ensure the added cost will bring in enough added sales to justify inclusion.

Not a good time to be experimenting with hardware, I don't think.

[kacir]

According to the interview with PocketBook CEO Oleg Naumenko that Igorsk found
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93873
we shouldn't worry.
PocketBook sells more than 50000 units/month in 2010, so they are not a small company.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kacir

According to the interview with PocketBook CEO Oleg Naumenko that Igorsk found
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93873
we shouldn't worry.
PocketBook sells more than 50000 units/month in 2010, so they are not a small company.

No, not small.
But the quote is they are *up* to 50K for the most recent month. Previous months are lower. Future months they hope will be bigger; they are aiming to double that rate by the end of 2011.

Doesn't sound like they're out of the running, which is good, but they still have to execute.

[Vienna01]

Those that seem to want to justify Pocketbook's premium "price point" because of its superior software & stable hardware forgot the big negative. A premium priced product should include premium documentation. There should be a user guide for folks with short attention spans and a comprehensive manual for folks who really want/need to USE the premium features. I have a PB301. Its documentation [English-I don't know about other versions] is anything but premium. I would never recommend a product, this product, that requires someone to read a internet forum or ask the vendor to learn how to use the product. Hardware is sometimes sold with 2 prices. Retail- higher price-includes full documentation, telephone help line maybe even detailed videos and OEM-lower price, usually much lower price- a white box and maybe a CD with essential software. I think my PB301 was little more than an OEM product with limited documentation. What's that say about its "price point"? If it were less costly as the Kindle & Sony etc. are it should share their price points. But what do I know I'm an engineer?[that is what the marketing folks always told me.]

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Vienna01

A premium priced product should include premium documentation.

Amen!

[mysweety]

I think that there are 2 areas where PB could really get ahead of the rest:

1) An offer for different dictionaries so you can buy what and which you want when you want it. This is really useful for working in different languages and would open up a market for students, translators etc.

2) Revamping the note pad. The select should allow start and finish in any part of the first and last lines and allow selection of the resulting quotation as text or image. Then it should enable the user to add some text so as to qualify the selection. It should then be possible to transfer the file to the PC and complete working on it. This opens the market for all of us that need to comment on books, texts etc.

[Dutch Reader]

Originally Posted by mysweety

I think that there are 2 areas where PB could really get ahead of the rest:

1) An offer for different dictionaries so you can buy what and which you want when you want it. This is really useful for working in different languages and would open up a market for students, translators etc.

2) Revamping the note pad. The select should allow start and finish in any part of the first and last lines and allow selection of the resulting quotation as text or image. Then it should enable the user to add some text so as to qualify the selection. It should then be possible to transfer the file to the PC and complete working on it. This opens the market for all of us that need to comment on books, texts etc.

Hear hear!