A Kindle Killer? Why bother?
I just saw this on Mashable… Barnes & Noble (US book retailer) are launching a ‘Kindle Killer’… it’s called Nook apparently…
“It’s like the iPod for books” say some folks. Well, no it’s not. The iPod was different. It replaced other expensive devices (walkman, discman, minidisc etc) that people had to carry to listen to music. A £200 iPod replaced a £110 discman or whatever. That’s a good deal. Paying $279 dollars for a Kindle or Nook where no device existed previously… doesn’t seem like a good deal
Then there’s ‘e-ink’… the ability of the Kindle et al to ‘look like a printed page’. Wow, you’ve spent all that time, energy and money to make something that looks like a static printed paper page. Brilliant, well done. You’ve just given everything on your device the exact same limitations that printed books have…
But the major thing bothering about me is that fact that the tablet is coming…
And not just Apple; Microsoft, Dell, Asus, Toshiba… everyone will make a tablet, like every phone manufacturer is trying to make an “iPhone”…
When tablets become competitively priced, you can pick up an device that let’s you do everything an an eBook lets you do and everything a laptop does to boot (edit documents, surf the web, watch video et etc)…
…then why would you bother buying an eBook?
Winning the eBook war is a little like becoming the king of the dinosaurs… it may be good for a while, but something big’s coming to make you all extinct…
