There’s been a lot happening recently in the ebook marketplace..
In the update I wrote a couple of weeks ago on the Amazon Kindle, I commented on the price of readers:
…the recent Kindle price cut, bringing it down to $299, is another step in the right direction. Though I personally believe it will need to move below $100 to really start to gain mainstream traction, breaking below the $300 price crosses a psychological threshold that makes it easier to bring in that next level of interested buyer.
Well Sony just moved the bar a little closer to that tipping point price, breaking the $200 barrier today with the announcement of their new Reader Pocket Edition. It has a somewhat smaller 5″ e-ink screen and can hold about 350 books. Sony has also announced that they will be matching Amazon’s price of $9.99 for recent best sellers.
Though it doesn’t have any way to let you buy books wirelessly like the Kindle does, the Reader Pocket Edition does cost $100 less – probably a fair trade off for many people. By having an under-$200 reader, along with lower ebook prices, Sony should be able open up the ebook market to a much wider audience. This is a significant move down the price curve, and will hopefully keep pressure on Amazon to continue moving their own prices lower.
Another bit of good news in the ebook world is that Barnes & Noble has decided to jump back into the business. For those that don’t remember, B&N was the supplier of digital books for the pioneering Nuvomedia Rocket eBook in the early 2000′s. After acquiring Fictionwise earlier this year (relaunched as ereader.com), they are now starting to pull their digital book strategy together. Unlike Amazon and Sony, B&N decided not to launch their own dedicated ebook device to go along with their new digital store. Instead, they are starting out by releasing a free software reader that runs on both the iPhone and iPod Touch, with an eye toward partnering with potentially multiple ebook device makers in the near future. This could be an excellent strategy for them. Given the lead Amazon and Sony have in this market, it makes sense for B&N to become the ‘open platform’ in the ebook world with the broadest choice of reading options available. Backing up this effort, they have launched with a significant number of ebooks already available for sale, as well as around 500k free public domain books available for download. Though not as splashy as Amazon’s launch of the Kindle 2, B&N has made a very credible entry into the ebook market here. And like Amazon, they have the buying power and focus necessary to evolve, become successful, and turn this into a viable component of their overall business.
With three major competitors in the ebook space (and many smaller ones as well), it’s clear that this market isn’t going to fade away this time like it has in the past. Between the introduction of new reading devices and the continually expanding catalog of books now available in digital format, the ebook business shows every sign of being a young, healthy consumer product segment.
But there could be one big shakeup coming in the near future.
While there isn’t a lot of clarity around their intentions, Apple is shaping up to become a possible “800lb Gorilla” in the ebook space. With mobile reader apps available from both Amazon and B&N, the iPhone/Touch already offers a great platform for digital book readers. Rumors are also making the rounds that Apple with be launching a color “tablet device” with a 10″ screen – a general portable media platform that could easily include ebooks in the mix. What lets Apple cast such an long shadow over this space is the power of their iTunes ecosystem. They have the store. They have the desktop footprint. They have the device footprint. The introduction of a larger form factor ‘tablet device’ could place them in the perfect position to subsume the ebook market within the already significant digital media market they dominate today.
While even the launch of a new device from Apple is only speculative at this point, their ability to dominate a market has a clear precedent in the way they have moved from music, to audio books, to podcasts, to television shows, and recently to movies. They started out small in each of these areas, but over time have managed to become the dominating force in all of them.
Whatever ends up happening with Apple, it’s great to see so much new activity going on in the ebook space. It seems to be moving into the mainstream on the consumer side even faster than I thought it would.
Hopefully publishers will take note and finally start to ramp up their digital efforts.
It feels like the tipping point is finally getting close.
