People are still boldly making predictions about what impact the iPad will have on reading and books and Publishing. Thankfully, a few of those predictions don’t involve the complete and utter destruction of the Kindle and other eReaders.
Kindle is going to survive camp
We have a miracle – After weeks of hysteria we have people acknowledging the fact that eReaders other than the iPad (which isn’t really an eReader) might be left with more than 0% market share once the iPad releases.
J.P. Morgan analyst generously lets Amazon keep 30% of the eReader market
The generosity of this arbitrary Kindle analysis covered by MediaMemo overwhelms me -
Amazon owns almost all of today’s e-book business.
But by the time Apple’s iPad, the Nook from Barnes & Noble (BKS), and others finish chewing away at its market share, Jeff Bezos and company will end up with something like 30 percent of digital book business, says J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan
The comment on the chart is literally this – Conservative – Assuming Apple, B&N, et al. capture majority of the market.
If this is the conservative estimate, what’s the aggressive estimate – that Amazon end up with -15% market share?
Love how B&N get thrown a bone.
The Atlantic Wire talks about shifting sentiments
It’s a miracle – someone actually thought before writing their Kindle, iPad article -
You Can’t Compete By Charging More There is at least one major difficulty to overcome at launch, writes Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer.
Amazon sells New York Times bestsellers at $9.99. If recent videos of the iPad posted on Apple’s Web site are any indication, Apple will be selling the same books at higher prices …
Thankfully at least one news source figured out that $9.99 books are apt to sell more than $14.99 books.
Really Intelligent Reading camp
Fast Company cover Paul Lamere’s post on magical things Amazon could do with the user behavior data the Kindle provides -
I hope Amazon aggregates their Whispersync data and give us some Last.fm-style charts about how people are reading.
Trophy Books – books that are most frequently purchased, but never actually read.
Pageturner – the top books ordered by average number of words read per reading session.
Burning the midnight oil – books that keep people up late at night.
Rather unfortunately Mr. Lemere titles his article ‘Spying on How We Read’.
The article starts on a path that is littered with a lot of good and bad possibilities. User behavior could mean a lot more than just usage charts – We’re talking uncannily good recommendation engines, better marketing strategies, better decisions on what books to publish, getting kids to read more, and other powerful things.
It could also be a threat to privacy and security. Amazon better make sure no one ever gets their hands on users’ reading history. That would be 100 times worse than 1984.
Might be Intelligent Reading – Seeking Alpha on eReaders
Don’t know what to make of this eReader smackdown article by Joel West.
- The good part is that he lays down different criteria on which to judge eReaders.
- The bad part is that for Price of the hardware and content he lists the Advantage as unknown (to be decided).
- The unfathomable part is that he thinks B&N might catch up with the iPad on doing things other than reading thanks to its tiny LCD screen and Android.
It’s good that he includes Microsoft, Nokia and other potential entrants (including companies that should have been entrants) in his article.
We’ve reached this magical point where people either claim LCD is just as good for reading as eInk (the common justification being you can’t read eInk in the dark – guess it’s too much like a book) or they just don’t mention the readability of the screen. Trust the press to take the single biggest advantage eReaders have and attack it or ignore it.
The Record is Stuck Camp
NY Times forgot that they had a meandering article about how a lack of book cover images makes ebooks terrible around 6 months ago (perhaps 12).
Motoko Rich writes about how we can’t judge a book by its cover with eReaders -
“There’s something about having a beautiful book that looks intellectually weighty and yummy,” said Ms. Wiles
The same Publishers who either slap the same generic cover on all ebooks or forget to include covers have this to say -
Even in the digital era, publishers believe that books need graphic representations — if only for the online marketing campaign.
Ladies and Gentlemen, perhaps we could start by adding great cover images to ebooks and keeping the illustrations intact?
iPad is going to do really, really well camp
Here are some articles revelling in ‘the iPad will destroy everything’ thinking -
JK thinks iPad will impact everyone’s eBook Business
James Kendrick thinks Amazon set the stage for iPad dominance in the ebook world with the Kindle for iPhone App -
It allows customers to browse the Amazon Kindle bookstore, buy books and then read them on the phone. Those who use Kindle for iPhone praise the ability to read Kindle books without Kindle hardware.
This is going to ramp up when the iPad hits consumer hands, and the Kindle for iPad app becomes available. The iPad will be a far better e-book reader than the iPhone.
The article keeps coming back to the concept of ‘the only universal ebook reader’ -
The iPad will be the only universal e-book reader that can handle paid content from just about anywhere, and that will be a game changer.
Universal eBook Reader wouldn’t be #1 on my list.
PriceGrabber Survey says iPad is going to be the best-selling eReader
Let’s leave aside the fact that the iPad is NOT an eReader and look at the numbers (courtesy PC Mag, survey of 1,600 online users) -
Researchers found that one in 20 consumers owns an e-reader and one-third plan to purchase one in the next year.
About 20% are leaning towards buying Apple’s iPad. Another 12% are looking at Amazon’s Kindle.
About 80 percent of respondents said they were not willing to pay more than $250 for an e-reader.
About 59 percent of people said they would not be willing to buy an e-book for the same price as a physical book.
If you look at those numbers there are some really strange answers – Every single respondent willing to pay more than $250 for an eReader is going to buy the iPad?
That’s what the figures say. PC Mag rightly points out that this survey totally contradicts a similar study by comScore. Two surveys don’t match – Wow!
It also seems that iPad owners won’t be focusing on fattening book publishers’ wallets –
one in 10 consumers say they will primarily use their iPad as an e-reader
People are beginning to feel that the iPad won’t take 100% of the eReader market and won’t completely annihilate dedicated eReaders. That J. P. Morgan analysts are willing to let the kindle have 30% market share (in the conservative case) is surely a sign the end of the world is near.
Filed under: iSlate Apple Slate Tagged: | good analysis, lack thereof
Here’s an agnostic view (even though the author did order an I-pad) of what the I-pad must do to be sustainably successful – it has to replace time spent using another device or doing another activity.
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/what-will-the-ipad-replace/
I find it interesting that I’ve not seen good numbers of the amount of time that people on average spend reading books and magazines to be used as an estimate of the amount of time people would spend using the I-pad as a reader of paid-for-content.
If it does really bring more people to reading books and magazines and newspapers, by making it so easy and attractive, then that’s a good thing, as they’ll have to trade that for time spent mindlessly web-surfing and TV/Video watching.
Carol, the iPad is much better suited to video watching and web surfing than it is to reading. It’ll probably be decent for reading – However, Apple are much more interesting in taking over TV and Video than books.