Future of M92

[Dolansky]

kontrabas, i think you are refering to the mini-map for PDF helps orient oneself to pan around in Kobo' s Aurora.
Thats nice, but the M92 do a much better job, when it comes to zoom features combined with margin cut -operation for academic reading as well as multicolum reading function.

by the way the tools in the statusbar in Booxtor's PDF Reader are outstanding useful.

The upcoming multitask feature for M92 correspond to my working scenarios for academic reading.
I often use two books to the same subject, because in one book the explanation is better then the other one but the first book is more comprehensive. Then i often use a third book as a big reference book as well as a wikipedia page to some topics, additional drawing mindmaps in the scribble.app to the topics i am working on.

[FinancialWar]

Originally Posted by Mono

I know that one may have 8 coces, lots of memory, etc. Besides it is more costly it also consumes much more energy. So, my question is. Are you going to pay the price of one fourth to one sixteenth of battery life for 300/600 dpi?

How is it going to be more costly or consume much more energy?

Obviously you haven't been following the mobile phone industry for the last few years have you.

Every year around the same time, mobile phone manufacturers launches a new model with roughly the same price as the their previous model launch price one year ago. For example the launch price for Samsung galaxy S3 is roughly the same price as S2 launch price.

So I don't know why some of you have this "cost more" mentality, the new Galaxy S3 is going "cost more" relative to the previous model the S2, not because the manufacturer raise the price for the new S3, the price launch price is the same, but only because the previous model S2 depreciated in value because of the release of the newer more powerful model. Your real purchasing power has in fact increased with the release of the newer S3, because you can buy a more powerful phone with the same amount of dollar. Would you buy the a older and weaker model for the same price? So it's not that manufacturer made the S3 more expensive, but supply and demand made the S2 cheaper relative to the S3. Bloody simple economics.

Second, seriously go to some research before making assumption that more powerful device = more power consumption. Did iPhone 5 have less battery life than iPhone 4s, iPhone 4s than iPhone 4, iPhone 4 than iPhone 3s and so on? Or is the S3 less power efficiently than the S2? Buy your assumption, the new S4 should have so little battery life because the screen is so many times more PPI and 8 times many cores than the first galaxy phone. In fact it's the opposite, newer and more power phones have better power efficiency and management, bigger battery capacity and larger and higher resolution screen without significant increase in weight or size.

1/4 or 1/16 of battery life for doubling the ppi? Funniest assumption I heard in a long time.

The simple fact is, M92 should have a successor by now, it's been more than a 1 year, it's should be updated. The only reason why it hasn't is because there is a lack of competition in the market, there is no market pressure to Onyx to make a better model because all of us suckers have no choice but to buy their M92, there is very few substitute at the moment.

If big players like Samsung or Sony enters the large ereader market, Onyx would have no hope with their currently product update speed.

[Randy11]

A factor in the price is the number of pieces bought. If Samsung buy 100 000 pieces of one chip and Onyx could by only 1 000, the cost by chip for Onyx is higher, so the cost for the final device will be higher.

[Mono]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

1/4 or 1/16 of battery life for doubling the ppi? Funniest assumption I heard in a long time.

For double dpi you have 4x more screen points to calculate, for quadruple dpi 16x more. You'll need much more energy and processor power to handle it. OK, it may be less than 4x or 16x more, but it will be quite a lot more than current needs.

If I compare price, I speak about the same time span, I do not compare price now and 2 years ago. More memory and more powerful processor is always more costly comparing to less memory, etc.

[Booxtor]

Hi,
there is a new successor of M92 in work now. It will get new look, HD screen and Android.
Release is most likely Q1 2014. But we expect some price rising because of new HD screen .

[onyxuser]

Booxtor,

what resolution will have this new model, 300 (2400x1650 px)or 200 (1600x1200 px) dpi ? Whether it will have a WACOM digitizer with stilus as M92 ?

[Mono]

Hard to say. I think that more memory and CPU power would be suffitient change. Maybe android., but anyway I doubt most of android applications would run satisfactory on android m92... Developers expect their apps to be run on normal colour display, not b&w e-ink.

[crazydog]

MultitasKING is working flawless. Very fast. Very simple 2 use. Very powerful.

Small productions means high prices. High prices lead to low sales. Low sales - means not enough money for additional experiments with alternative reading devices.

I believe something like that also killed the Kindle DX.
While I don't believe hardware improvements can achieve much better sales, I belive in better software and reliability.

Though I think premium ereader will never be a lucrative market, nevermind which improvements are made. Most of us bought an ereader due to eye strain and other concerns on LCD Screens. We (here especially in Onyx Forum) are a minority.

I think the majority is buying ereader because they are there, cheap and maybe useful for them. No one of them would buy an ereader with super pdf functionality, because they think they can do the same on a tablet.

I like Onyx. I like those improvements. I appriciate your effort Booxtor.
I don't like my suggestion, like I don't like monkey:
You could subsidize the reader by implementing advertisements to make them cheaper. (ala amazon)
But maybe it helps ...

[axiomize]

I am not a businessman.

I think there is one rather obvious target community who might be interested in the M92, but very likely doesn't know about it, namely conferences in maths and physics.

Frequently publishers visit conferences to sell their journals and books. However, I think that scientists attending conferences would be much more interested in *good* ereaders. I know several people having trouble reading the usual displays - me included... Although I knew that I'd want an eink display, it took me quite some time to find the M92, and I was very hesitant whether it would be good enough for my purposes. "Good enough" is of course subjective. For me it was

* large display size - 9.7 inch is just enough, though I wouldn't mind more...
* weight - the m92 is perfect there
* scribbling on pdf - the m92 is perfect there
* time it takes to flip a page, switch between books - I hope the new multitasking feature improves this
* robustness - my m92 is perfect there, so far...

[hakaha2]

Originally Posted by Booxtor

Hi,
there is a new successor of M92 in work now. It will get new look, HD screen and Android.
Release is most likely Q1 2014. But we expect price rising for around 100EUR just because of new HD screen .
To be honest I am not really very happy and optimistic with this new model - it is very hard to achieve good sales by this very special devices. High prices could be a reason for losing interest to that model, decreased sales and possibly death of the company.


Onyx is already almost fighting for surviving - it is hard to compete with syndicates like Amazon, Kobo or BN.

Small productions means high prices. High prices lead to low sales. Low sales - means not enough money for additional experiments with alternative reading devices. Vicious circle.

It seems to be a good choice for Onyx to focus on the combination of "content-consuming" and the excellent hardware,just like the sales patterns of Amazon,which extended its market in mainland China with KPW just now.
That means one can keep R&D and provide excellent service for customers on both software and hardware,with the cash flow from the "intrinsic" benefit(online bookstore).

[Jmirko]

I think it's very interesting to speculate what strategy Onyx should follow in order to be successful in the ereader market. Here is my opinion in a nutshell. If it generates some interest, I may post a longer version (as a link).

What I see is that currently Onyx is mostly competing with the big boys (Amazon, Kobo, B&N) with its 6-inch readers, and losing on price. Its only unique product is the M92, and it has not done much to exploit the potential of the large wacom touchsreen.

Onyx cannot be competitive in the area of "standard" ereaders, because the big players will always be able to offer much lower prices, and convenient access to (their own) bookstores. Instead, Onyx should focus on innovative hardware, niche markets, and leveraging the user community.

As a first step, Onyx should modify the M92 (software, stylus) and position it as an affordable digital notepad for students and office workers - anyone who uses paper notebooks daily. It's a potentially huge market, but it can only be tapped if Onyx can break out of the vicious cycle of "low volume - high price - low volume". I think it must cost less than 200 (USD/EUR/GBP). If this product is successful, it will provide Onyx with the brand recognition, user base, and - hopefully - cash to pursue the strategy further.

Next, Onyx should do market research to find more potentially lucrative niche product segments, e.g.:
- light, thin, durable ereader with flexible screen, a la Wexler Flex One (but without the mistakes...)
- tablet-ereader hibrid (like the Yotaphone)
- ereader with solar panel (never needs to be charged)
- 8-inch ereader
- color ereader (eventually...)
Only products with a "wow-factor" will be able to compete successfully for buyers' wallets.
Sure, these will never sell in the millions like a Kindle, but that carries an advantage - the big makers will probably not compete with Onyx for such a small slice of the cake.

In the meantime, Onyx should use the user community for ideas, for feedback, and for word-of-mouth marketing. Booxtor is doing a great job, but this should be done directly by Onyx - on a much larger scale and in more structured form, in all target markets.

What do you think? Is this strategy viable? If so, then what other niche products would you like to see? If not, then what do you think Onyx should do?

[janek]

Originally Posted by Jmirko

I think it's very interesting to speculate what strategy Onyx should follow in order to be successful in the ereader market. Here is my opinion in a nutshell. If it generates some interest, I may post a longer version (as a link).
?

Word up! They should hire you as chief strategy planner

[Kirith]

Jmirko, +1
Our Russian distributor of that way does not go ... :-( They threw a massive sales force to the highest bidder through large retail chains. Development of software - no

Наш российский дистрибьютор по этому пути не пошёл... :-( Они бросили силы на массовые продажи по высокой цене через крупные торговые сети. Разработки ПО - нет

[FinancialWar]

Originally Posted by Jmirko

As a first step, Onyx should modify the M92 (software, stylus) and position it as an affordable digital notepad for students and office workers - anyone who uses paper notebooks daily. It's a potentially huge market, but it can only be tapped if Onyx can break out of the vicious cycle of "low volume - high price - low volume". I think it must cost less than 200 (USD/EUR/GBP). If this product is successful, it will provide Onyx with the brand recognition, user base, and - hopefully - cash to pursue the strategy further.

The higher the price, the more ereaders Onyx are willing to supply. The supply curve is upward sloping.

The best way to reduce price is to get more company into the market.

[FinancialWar]

Originally Posted by ManDay

Ah, lovely. I was just wondering how long it will take until you suggest "more cores!", "more memory!!", "more ports and connectors!!!"...

It's called the assumption of non-satiation.