Front page article in the WSJ today (Sorry, but I have a limited amount of reading time, WSJ is a higher priority that others, thus the glut of articles from that source and dearth from others) on the price war that is starting between eReaders, specifically between the Kindle and the Sony eReader.
The iPad has now completely differentiated itself from the others and now rarely is mentioned in articles about eReaders except as the bar to which all others should aspire. The color screen, the other functions and features; the iPad costs hundreds of dollars more than the others and shows no signs of discounting it's price, nor any need to. The others? The hoi polloi of the eReading world? Those that tried to be a player by first to market? They are struggling for the scraps and this move to drop the prices for their readers is the first move in a chess match which is going to leave us with one preeminent eReader, the iPad, and one other.
I was most intrigued by this line, "A price war for low-end e-readers could force Barnes & Noble and Amazon to rely more heavily on their profit from selling e-books. Under so-called agency sales agreements with many top publishers, e-bookstores keep about 30% of the sale price of e-books. Booksellers are actually making money off of e-books now. That was not the case when they built their business plans and set their original prices for these devices." This quote opens up some interesting thoughts regarding how publishers and booksellers will position themselves for the future. Most other articles have concentrated on how worried publishers were about the digital reading revolution, how they will be left in the cold with no position to occupy. I wonder in what ways publishers will not let that happen? How will their job positions change as the delivery of their material changes?
What I find the most worrisome is that the Kindle and other dedicated eReaders are now considered second tier to a multi-purpose computer like the iPad. At some point Amazon must have decided to not expand the functionality of the Kindle and instead focus completely on delivering the best eReader and content delivery system they could. Why is that worrisome? On a personal level my own company has decided to do the same thing in the mobile video recording world. So far, thankfully, the gamble has paid off for us, it remains to be seen if the Kindle will survive the up and coming price wars.
My prediction . . . we'll begin to see a greater ability to share content across the different platforms. In much the same way that I can use MSWord on my Mac, I believe I'll be able to get books from multiple sources for the Kindle. We're already seeing that capability creep up, Kindle for my computer, Kindle for my iPhone, Kindle for my Droid.
No comments:
Post a Comment