Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Choosing an eReader has been a simple ‘Kindle Vs Sony Reader’ decision for most of the lifetime of the Kindle.

We are now at a crossroads because -

1. Holiday Season 2009 becomes Kindle Vs Nook Vs Sony Reader Vs iRex. 
2. Early 2010 that morphs into Kindle Vs Apple iReader Vs Nook Vs Sony Reader Vs Plastic Logic Vs iRex.

Does Freedom of Choice Hurt Customers?

First, here’s a video from TED – It’s Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice –

Mr. Schwartz’s two downsides of more choice are crucial -

1. Choice produces paralysis rather than liberation.
2. Even if we make a choice, we end up less satisfied with our choice than if we had fewer options.

The 2nd point is crucial to eReaders – the attractive features of the eReader that you did not buy will, if you’re not careful and guard against it, reduce your joy in the eReader you chose.  

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

That’s difficult when Sony is pushing Openness and Touch, Nook is pushing Lending and an add-on color navigation/browsing screen, Kindle is pushing Free Internet and $9.99 prices.

Coming back to Mr. Schwartz -

There’s no question that Some Choice is better than None. But it doesn’t follow from that that More Choice is better than Some Choice.

If the ideal really is Some Choice,

Is the Ideal eReader Market one with 2 to 3 Main eReaders, and 1 clearly best eReader?

There has been a lot of reasearch on Behavioral Economics, with this Behavioral Economics PDF from Diamond Partners a good starting point (Amazon gets mentioned several times).

If you start translating Mr. Schwartz’s talk and the Behavioral Economics study for the eReader Market you begin to see a few things -

1. Some Choice is better than an overwhelming amount of choice.  
2. An eReader Market with 2 to 3 clearly better eReaders would be best.  
3. Having one clear best eReader would lead to happier customers.  

At the same time we do want competition to spur innovation and create a better value proposition for customers -

1. New eReaders and/or new innovations from existing eReaders to keep pushing the technology forward.  
2. The best eReader being under enough pressure to keep evolving and adding on features.

Unfortunately, we’re on the very verge of crossing into Too Much Choice.

The Worst Case Scenario – Choice Overwhelms the eReader and eBook Market. 

There are a lot of problems with having 4 or more main eReaders -

1. The choice overwhelms customers – they take longer to decide to buy an eReader, don’t always buy an eReader, and they’re unhappy after buying an eReader.
2. The number of relationships and connections keep exploding i.e. every Publisher has to negotiate with every eReader company.
3. Companies using their own formats and their own DRM. 
4. eReaders start taking suicidal steps to compete – unsustainable price cuts, devaluing books, and so forth.  
5. The segmented market means middle-men can take over. That’s when distributors and retailers will again become prominent.

The fifth is much more important than we realize. It’s an elaborate game of cat and mouse where Publishers are trying to ensure no eReader company gets too strong, and the existing Middle-Men are trying to find cracks to force themselves back into the pipeline.

The Ideal Scenario – The Right Amount of Choice

There  is a slight chance we can escape getting overwhelmed and stabilize at the right amount of choice.

• The ideal situation is where all the good, innovative features that are thought up make their way quickly to the #1 and #2 eReaders.
• You can see this happening with Kindle for PC and lower Kindle prices.
• At the same time we can see Sony and Nook incorporate good Kindle features like Wireless Downloads.

The important thing is to still have a clear #1 and a clear #2 eReader.

If we have 4 eReaders that are all very good and almost indistinguishable, then we go back to the way things were.

Lots of Choice might undo a lot of the Progress

If we have 4 eReaders that are all very good and almost indistinguishable (though with different killer features), then we get chaos - 

1. Users are overwhelmed by choice.
2. The amount of satisfaction readers get from their eReader will reduce.
3. The sales rate for eReaders will slow down.

eReaders will always be competing against each other and be at the mercy of other parts of the books eco-system. We will go back to an inefficient system where tons of middle-men feed off of inefficiencies -

1. Publishers can ask for a larger share. 
2. Existing middle-Men can come back in – Stores, Distributors, etc.  
3. New middle-men will arise that provide formatting services and cloud storage and ‘eDistribution’.

The progress is going to come from new players, not the existing ones.

The best we can hope for might be to have a Kindle-Apple top 2 (or a Kindle-Sony top 2) with a pack behind them that keeps pushing them on.

Filed under: eBook Reader Devices, evolution Tagged: | kindle vs, paradox of choice