Monday, October 31, 2011
AMAZON KICKS NOOK’S BUTT WITH KINDLE, BUT WHAT ABOUT APPLE?
2:05 PM | 
Posted by
LEADERHUNTRESS |
I found this article by David Magee on Linked In-Tools for Publishing, which appeared about a month ago. As the world morphs to digital books – and the smell of a delicious old article moves further and further away from my nose (out of sight, but never ever out of mind), the war wages between B & N with its Nook and Amazon with its Kindle. Here’s what David says:
Ouch, said Barnes & Noble, America's largest bookstore chain which relies heavily on sales of its Nook and Nook Color. Amazon's Fire tablet is $50 cheaper than the Nook Color. Amazon also announced it will slash prices on its.Kindle ereaders
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke at a news conference during the launch of Amazon's new tablets in New York, September 28, 2011. Amazon.com Inc unveiled its long-awaited tablet computer on Wednesday with a $199 price tag, potentially cheap enough to give Apple Inc's iPad some serious competition for the first time.
Here are five reasons Amazon could drive a nail in Barnes & Noble's coffin:
1) The Nook has arguably saved Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp, positioning the company well in the digital realm as sales at brick and mortar chain bookstores shrivel. Borders went bankrupt, for instance, because it was too late and too weak with its digital entries. The Nook has sold been solid, and respectable, but it has also been a drag on BN's earnings. Now, BN is forced to slash prices on its Nook products based upon Amazon now having set the pricing bar -- low.
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1. BN can't afford to lose money on hardware sales like Amazon can.2) BN has reportedly been moving toward launching its own new tablet, reportedly called "Acclaim." Reports have suggested the product will be priced at $349. But since Amazon has more content, including streaming movies with its Prime subscriptions, it isn't likely that a higher priced tablet will have much of a chance competing against Amazon's lower-priced tablet. So not only will BN have to slash prices on its Nook products, including the Nook Color, but the company may have already lost on the Acclaim before the public has really even heard about the product.
The company can't afford to move backwards, because Chapter 11 is too close behind.
3) BN's online presence was better than what Borders ever had, since Borders was so late into that game. For years, Borders simply let Amazon run its online bookstore before the company launched its own site not long before filing bankruptcy and dissolving. But while bn.com has helped keep BN in business, the website is suddenly getting quite inferior to Amazon.com.
Simply, Amazon.com, and its Prime $79 annual subscription, gets stronger and stronger. The company is adding more content, including recently signed deals for movies and TV shows with CBS and Universal pictures. BN just doesn't have the money to get there. It's a case of the strong getting stronger and the weak getting left behind. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggested at today's Kindle Fire unveiling, it's about much more than the hardware.
That's true. Amazon has much more. And BN has less in comparison with each and every passing day.
4) BN's big advantage with the Nook is supposedly that it has brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country from which to sell the products. But that's more of a liability than an advantage. It's a costly way to sell digital products, since that real estate is not cheap. Because the company is laden with so much expensive retail real estate it doesn't have the nimbleness in e-products pricing that Amazon does.
5) Amazon's expected mass success with its Kindle Fire tablet -- most observers think Amazon will sell millions of the new product rather quickly -- will only further entrench the company's position as the ebooks leader. Sure, BN hasn't been too far behind, but that gap is likely to grow. And the farther Amazon pulls ahead, the less attractive BN becomes for investors when the company needs to raise capital.
In full disclosure, this isn't a wish that BN will die. The opposite is true. America's needs its largest bookstore chain. It's just that Amazon has just thrown down a competitive gauntlet that BN, already on shaky ground in a slowing book-sales world, simply can't afford. (end of David’s piece).
So, we’re watching all of this. As far as e-books, I was talking with another naysayer last week who tells me e-books are not credible; “they’re sleazy.” I informed him – not true anymore – many are credible, in fact, some top rated authors have benefitted. I will write about this in coming weeks.
As an Apple fan, I always wonder where “IT-The Great Apple” comes in. Obviously, the iPad can do anything better than anyone else.
But apparently, the late, great Steve Jobs said “no Apple e-book” and no one believed him. In an article in Venturebeat.com by Paul Bouton on September 11,
HE reported that IT was reported that Steve Jobs gave New York Times reporter David Pogue an interview. Asked if Apple was ready to debut an e-reader like Amazon’s Kindle — but much, much prettier, of course Jobs said he didn’t think e-readers made sense:
He said Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this time, and also noted that Amazon never says how many Kindles is sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”
Venturebeat then says, according to input, the Internet’s vote is in: Why believe him(Jobs)? Guardian correspondent Bobbie Johnson unearthed past quotes in which Jobs bluffed on video iPods:
“One of the things we say around Apple, and I paraphrase Bill Clinton from the 1992 presidential race, is ‘It’s about the music, stupid.’ … You can’t watch a video and drive a car. We’re focused on music.”
And in which Jobs’ vice president of iTunes, Eddie Cue, misled readers prior to the iPhone’s debut:
“What we’ve talked about is a something that is valuable for the mass market,” Cue said. “It has to be a phone in the middle-tier of the market, not a $500-tier phone. It has to be very seamless to use.”
VentureBeat says: “
Our guess: Apple will sell a device that reads books and then some. Jobs will explain how it all makes sense. I’ll write a post agreeing with him.”
Back to Melissa aka LeaderHuntress: Unfortunately, Jobs won’t be explaining THAT as predicted but someone else from Apple will; because I think Apple is the top contender. The question is – will people want more than one tablet? Why would someone get a Kindle and an iPad2? It’s a deliver device. I would go with the delivery device that provides the most items for delivery. Or am I missing something? Samsung? Are you there?
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