Ebook Industry Changes (linkspam)

[elf]

Five things make a linkspam? Lots of changes in the ebookery world:

Overdrive stops supporting Mobipocket--a side effect of the new Kindle library ebooks. Most of those older ebooks will be converted to Kindle (which is Mobipocket format with different DRM setup); some will be lost entirely. Overdrive is planning to refund library purchases of those books.
CONCLUSION: Digital purchases are not intended to be forever; they're "until the company that manages the servers decides they're not worth supporting anymore."

Vook stops making content to focus on software. Vookbooks, if you didn't know (I'm fairly oblivious & only know they exist because I hang out in too many ebook forums) are interactive, app-like ebooks.
CONCLUSION: If there's a substantial market for "enhanced" ebooks, nobody knows what to do with it yet. (My thoughts: There's a market, but it's not the book market, just like the market for movies is not "enhanced stage plays.")

California Reader Privacy Act signed into law; a nice step towards treating ebook access like pbook access: something that the gov't doesn't have the right to spy on without a compelling (read: court-provable) reason.
CONCLUSION: Yay, someone's paying attention to the frightening amount of personal info moving through the business world with no controls.

Kindle Fire could be iPad killer; skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.

Ebook price-fixing lawsuit focuses on Apple in collusion w/publishers; 5 publishers insist that they spontaneously decided to switch to the "agency model" because it seemed like the best business practice; they didn't coordinate with Apple to squeeze Amazon and convince consumers that ebooks "should" cost more than $10 nope nope nope.
CONCLUSION: While this looks like a very simple, "obviously pricefixing" case, I gather the legalities are complicated. While we can all recognize "companies working together to get more profits," not all of that translates to illegal business practices; companies aren't barred from grabbing business habits from each other--just from coordinating them in advance.

Comments

[zvi]

I think you're missing the point? No one is claiming that the Kindle Fire can do everything that an iPad can do, and there are going to be some people who won't have any use for a tablet which can't do X thing, like astrology.

But for a lot of people, especially a lot of home consumers (which is the market Amazon cares about, because people buy copies of Fast Five, not corporations), an iPad does more than they really need, especially if they already have some other computer on which to commit Srs Bzns. What they don't have is a tv/web browser/ebook/Angry Birds/jukebox in their pocket. And the Kindle Fire promises to be just that tv/web browser/ebook/Angry Birds/jukebox in their pocket, and it's cheap enough that you can get one for every member of a (small, middle class) family, instead of everybody having to share (draw straws for/start a war over) an iPad.

Not really

[thejeopardymaze]

I have no doubt tons of people will buy it and find it to be very useful to a lot of people, but as an iPad killer? It has a long way to go.

...an iPad does more than they really need, especially if they already have some other computer on which to commit Srs Bzns.

It's better to do more than what's needed than not enough, and if anything, sales indication that Apple doesn't have anything to worry about just yet, and its not only rich or middle class people buying it. There's also the fact it's not only corporations that can find the iPad very useful.

I alsi feel like adding here that I do think most if not all IT companies are pure slime, including the corporation that made my MacBook, so I'm only speaking of practical reasons to use it. The choices and lack there of out there still suck, and I'm not happy about the fact I'll still be staying with Apple for awhile, but hey, that's life, and there's no point in being a lifestyle activist.

Thus the criticisms I'm making isn't because I think, much less want, just Apple to succeed. I want the competitors to also succeed, but they need to be serious about making their products truly competitive in the long run, not just a knock off clone with not many apps available, thus the importance of working with developers from the very beginning.

You also have to keep in mind tablets will eventually become as popular as netbooks and laptops, but like netbooks and laptops in the early years, will have to mostly catch up when it comes to both price and performance. They will probably due that eventually, but it will take some time for that to happen, and portable terabyte hard drives are popular for a reason.

Re: Not really

[zvi]

It's better to do more than what's needed than not enough

That is not categorically true, especially if doing more than enough has a considerable cost. (Since an entry level iPad is more than double the cost of a Kindle Fire, doing more has a considerable cost.)

I'm not saying, no one is saying, that Apple is going to close tomorrow because the Kindle Fire is shipping in November. Apple has plenty of time…to come up with a cheaper tablet which does less. (It's not like Apple has never made a great product, and then turned around and made a less expensive version when third parties started manufactoring cheap, less capable products similar to what Apple made great. You've heard of the iPod nano?)

I also don't understand what you mean about Amazon not working with developers? The app store is all about Amazon working with developers and knowing that it needs apps in order to make the Kindle Fire work. No, it doesn't have as many apps as the iPad. But Apple didn't always have as many apps as the iPad does now. And if a bazillion people buy Kindle Fires, you know what developers are going to do? Make Android apps, because people will have something to buy them with.

Look, there is a well-established business historical practice where a cheap, less capable product does, actually, compete an expensive and extremely capable product out of business, or, at least, into a niche of the 200 people on Earth who need everything that the super-expensive thing can do. It is not inevitable that that will happen to Apple, and it's not inevitable that, should that happen, the Kindle Fire will be the tablet that does it to Apple. But the Fire does point out that there's an opening, for something that's cheap, does a specific set of things really well, and doesn't pretend to do everything an iPad does. Because, again, a lot of people who were mulling over buying an iPad don't need everything an iPad does.