How Come Amazon Is More Popular Than Kobo?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Because Kobo products are junk and their shop is quite poor.

Jealousy and envy will get you nowhere.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Shad Plante

I can’t ever remember seeing Kobo devices much except at Borders near the end and at niche bookstores. I don’t think they have ever tried that hard to penetrate the US market.

They were at Borders, Best Buy & Frys Electronics early on. Borders went belly up, Best Buy & Frys both stopped carrying them (not sure if that was Kobo's or the retailers decision due to lack of sales or something else or?). Kobo then went the route of hooking up with indie bookstores and they were also stocked at Family Christian stores. Family Christian went into bankruptcy and the indie thing never went far with all but a handful of stores. But Short Covers/Kobo purposely didn't go all out against Amazon and others in the US.


More on Kobo & the US market...
Why Kobo didn't focus only on the U.S., home turf of Amazon

[barryem]

I have and have had Kobos, Kindles and Nooks for a lot of years. I've never had any problems with any of them. The majority of my ereaders have been Kindles. I live in a retirement home and when I'm ready for a new model I usually pass my old one to someone else. All the ones I know about, which is most of them, are still working just fine. That includes my first ereader, a Kindle Keyboard, bought in 2009.

I prefer Kindles because they have the best feature selection, at least for my needs, and everything works the way it should.

Barry

[BadBilly]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A couple of minor nits. Kobo was not a response by several brick and mortar retailers--Kobo was Chapters/Indigo's creation as Shortcovers and was later spun off and still later purchased by Japan's Rakuten.

In 2009, when Shortcovers (started in 2008) was spun off into the separate company of Kobo, Borders acquired a share, as did REDHoldings (the Australia/NZ operator of Borders stores in those regions). These companies operated bricks-and-mortar stores under multiple brands: Chapters, Indigo, Coles, Smithbooks (all of those owned by Indigo but all operating stores under their own brands), Borders, Angus & Robertson, and Whitcoulis. So, fair to say that sever bricks-and-mortar retailers were looking to create a coalition against Amazon. Maybe if they'd gotten Barnes & Noble on board as well, they may have had enough market share to really challenge Kindle in the US.

[BadBilly]

Sarmat89 Because Kobo products are junk and their shop is quite poor.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Jealousy and envy will get you nowhere.

Be kind to people who can only define their worth through their possessions. They have it bad enough.

[mathil]

I've had far more problems with my usage with the PW3 than any of my Kobo ereaders. For real. This doesn't mean that I go on the Kindle forum and complain about it to try and turn people off Amazon - I can imagine Kindle users have their very good reasons for using them. At times I think it would be nice if the same courtesy was extended to Kobo users: one bad experience doesn't make a manufacturer unequivocally bad.

[HotblackDesiato]

Originally Posted by BadBilly

Be kind to people who can only define their worth through their possessions. They have it bad enough.

Succint! Thank you!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by barryem

I prefer Kindles because they have the best feature selection, at least for my needs, and everything works the way it should.

Barry

Same here. And when I started to think about getting an e-reader back in 2011, I had not even heard of Kobo. So I got a Kindle. Because I liked it and had no problems with it, my next e-readers were Kindles also. I've never been disappointed with them, so there has been no strong incentive to switch.

The only thing I did not like about Kindles was the lack of customization options. When our local store started to sell Kobos, I thought about getting one, but they didn't have page turn buttons which is a must-have for me. So I stuck to Kindles. Fortunately Amazon changed their mind about custom fonts recently and now there is even less reason to switch. That said, I'm certainly not averse to Kobo readers and possibly might get one in the future, if Kobo comes out with something really nice (and includes page turn buttons).

[HotblackDesiato]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Same here. And when I started to think about getting an e-reader back in 2011, I had not even heard of Kobo.

When I learned the Sony store was closing down I immediately got a Kindle and converted everything to that format. I had been stripping DRM for years. Suddenly, losing everything wasn't an abstract idea. By the time I learned Sony was transferring their customers to Kobo I had already migrated to Kindle.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Kiwisaurus

Why do more people know Amazon but not Kobo eReaders?

Lots of reasons, but probably the biggest one (in the U.S.) is availability. Most eBook readers probably didn't eve know Kobos existed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Futuregrace

The ability to sync docs and my own books on the Amazon cloud, even if only in mobi format is the only reason I don’t switch to Kobo. I’d literally switch today if they made something like that.

The Amazon Cloud isn't the reason that most people use Amazon rather than Kobo. Actually their Cloud (and ANYONE's Cloud or Sync) should be avoided.
Most people actually use their phone. The Kindle App. Amazon is a monopolistic behemoth. They have ploughed most of their profits since 1998 into taking over competitors, diversifying and marketing.
See their takeovers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ions_by_Amazon

The Kobo SW is pretty poor, though maybe better than Amazon Kindle, which has hardly improved except in font/language support since the first Kindle, which was based off the Mobi Reader.
If you have Calibre, then Kobo is far better for annotation than the Kindle.
If you want to read books off Gutenberg (out of copyright classics), then there is little difference. Both platforms are rubbish for organising a library of books, so if you have more than maybe 20 to 100 ebooks, you need Calibre and a laptop.
If you want to buy books, paper or eBooks, then Amazon has over 80% of the online market, as they also own Abe and Book Depository.
The next biggest eBook seller is Smashwords, who provide most formats of eBooks and supply Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and many others.

Kobo needs to take Amazon to court for ONLY supplying Kindle Format and only supplying Amazon Kindle App for phones, tablets, PCs and not any eReaders.

Also DRM is evil. It benefits Amazon more than publishers. DRM has NEVER stopped piracy. It adds costs to consumer that ONLY buys legitimate content.

In the long term without regulatory change, the Kobo online shop is doomed. Unless other eReader makers seriously improve SW vs Kindle, get price & HW right (Add home, back and turn buttons!) they are doomed. The Sony PRSx50 eReaders years ago were quite good. Madness that they switched to Android (the only points to Android are the Java like apps and the Android GUI, neither of which is any use for eInk).
Big publishers need to publish eBooks directly and stop getting destroyed by Amazon. The Amazon Prime, KDP Select, Scout etc are evil.
There needs to be regulation so that ANY eReader works with any online eBook seller, otherwise apps on phones and tablets will make eInk be an Amazon niche product if it survives at all.
Barnes&Noble being stupid preventing download to PC.

[forster01]

Originally Posted by BadBilly

Be kind to people who can only define their worth through their possessions. They have it bad enough.

That is an answer to the question in the name of this topic. 95% americans are function on the principle click-and-buy without getting into the topic.
As 99% of he book sales in USA is made on amazon, kindle accessibility made them buy one. i tend to think that 95% of buyers of the kindle don't even know that there are other manufacturers of the ebook readers.

[forster01]

further more, ereader market is very small one comparing to the tablets and similar devices, as people can use tablets and mobile phones(??) for reading...
Amazon is in the top 6 companies in the world in market values. and that doesn't mean that they are the best.

[ps67]

Originally Posted by mathil

It seems weird that you'd never even heard about Kobo, they've had stands in literally every Feltrinelli and Mondadori store for the past 6 years, and in most retail electronics stores. Feltrinelli and Mondadori don't even have their own ebook store, in fact -- they redirect you to Kobo because they have a partnership with them. I believe you, don't get me wrong, it just sounds really weird to me.
It's absolutely true that there's no advantage in choosing the Amazon store over Kobo/IBS/BookRepublic, as ebook prices are set by the publishers here. There's also the issue of libraries lending ebooks only in EPUB format.

May be I didn't pay attention when I visited Feltrinelli (Pisa, Firenze, Livorno) or Mondadori (Livorno, now closed) bookstore but it is true.
I converted myself into digital books only 18 months ago, and since then I started to research all about the argument and after all I bought a KA1 .
Now I prefer digital books.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by Futuregrace

The ability to sync docs and my own books on the Amazon cloud, even if only in mobi format is the only reason I don’t switch to Kobo. I’d literally switch today if they made something like that.

This is exactly the same reason I stay with Kindle. Everything else I prefer Kobo over Kindle, but this one killer feature keeps me in Kindle-Land.