Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

With the Kindle 3 doing well, Nook 2 presumably around the corner, and rumors of new Sony Readers swirling it seems a particularly bad time to enter the eReader market.

At the same time there’s a huge opportunity because eReaders are poised to truly explode with prices finally hitting a level at which selling tens of millions of eReaders a year is no longer a dream. If there’s a time to enter the market it’s now. It brings up an important question -

Could a new entrant take on Kindle 3, Nook 2, and the new Sony Readers?

Well, let’s start by considering the concept of the Minimum Viable eReader.

Minimum Viable Reader – the essential features to compete with Kindle 3, Nook 2, Sony 650

Here are the features a new eReader must have to be taken seriously -

1. eInk screen or another reading specific screen. It has to be a screen optimized for reading (none of that transflective LCD nonsense). If it’s eInk it has to be eInk Pearl.
2. Support for the major formats – Support for prc, PDF, ePub, Word, and txt. The more formats supported the better.   
3. Good PDF support.
4. Light and Compact. There’s a very strong trend of eReaders going small and reducing their weight and new eReaders have to be light and compact to compete.
5. Connectivity – There has to be either WiFi or 3G. Ideally both.
6. eBooks – A solid connection to a good ebook store. B&N has shown a readiness to share its ebook store and Google Editions will probably also be available.  
7. Very good Battery Life. At least 2 weeks.
8. Decent Storage and storage options. 2 GB or more of storage or an SD card slot.
9. Good Customer Service. eReaders and ebooks tend to generate lots of support issues and handling these well is critical to be able to compete.
10. Very usable interface. Including a very usable physical keyboard or a good on-screen keyboard if it has a touch screen. 
11. Close to zero learning curve.
12. Language Support. It doesn’t have to include CJK font support but it should support multiple languages.
13. Font Options like changing the font size and line spacing.

To compete for the top 2-3 spots an eReader has to have at least these qualities.

It’s possible for an eReader that lacks one or more of the above qualities to still carve out a valuable piece of the eReader Market. It can do this by targeting specific niches.

The Add-on NicheReader – A supplement to the Big 3

There is a very valuable niche a new entrant could occupy – that of the add-on eReader.

1. For Kindle 3 owners it would be a very basic eReader that can handle library books and ePub and all the other DRMed eBook formats. 
2. It should include a SD card slot and a replaceable battery to further help fill the Kindle’s gaps.
3. For Nook and Sony Reader owners it would be a very basic eReader running Android or Windows and capable of running Kindle for Android or Kindle for PC. 
4. It should have text to speech to further fill the gaps of the Nook and Sony Reader
5. It’s quite possible, and probably a good idea, for a niche eReader to include both of these features.

Lots of Kindle and Nook owners would consider such a device. If it managed to come in at $75 to $100 lots of them would get it as a second eReader to supplement their Kindle 3 or Nook 2.

The Super Cheap, Large Screen eReader Niche

The Kindle DX 2′s price of $379 leaves a huge gap and an eReader could sneak in if it had -

1. A price around $200.  
2. A screen that is 9″ or 10″ and eInk.
3. Good Support for PDFs.
4. Good format support.
5. WiFi to ensure some sort of connectivity.  

It would ideally also have a majority of the features mentioned in the Minimum Viable eReader list. However, its main draw would be being a large screen eReader at a very low price.  

Beating the Incumbents – Features that would give an eReader an advantage over Kindle 3, Nook 2, Sony 650

To go from Minimum Viable eReader status to contender status an eReader would have to steal and copy the Big 3′s best features -

1. Low Price. It would have to come in at under $200 and get as close to $150 as possible.
2. ePub support and support for Library Books like Nook and Sony Reader.
3. Text to Speech like Kindle.
4. An equivalent of WhisperNet would be nice though it might be too expensive.
5. 3G with Free Store Browsing and Free 60 second book downloads like Kindle 3 and Nook 2. 
6. Really fast page turns like Kindle 3 and Sony.
7. Very wide range of available books and good prices like Kindle Store.
8. Steal the openness idea B&N and Sony are trying to push.
9. SD Card Slot like Sony Reader and Nook have.
10. Touch like Sony Reader Touch Edition has. Only do this if you can do it without compromising readability. It isn’t OK to start with an eInk Pearl screen, add touch, and make it look like a Kindle 1 screen.
11. LendMe or a feature like it. If you can get Publishers to expand from 1 loan per book to 2 or 3 loans per book that’d be a big win.

If a new eReader is able to incorporate 70% or more of these features (in addition to the features on the Minimum Viable eReader list) it would suddenly become a worthwhile contender.

Gaining an Edge – Features that the Big 3 don’t have 

After you’ve hit contender status by including 70% of the killer features found across the Big 3 eReaders you can start looking at improving on them –  

1. Remove all lock-in. Kindle doesn’t support ePub and B&N doesn’t let you take your ebooks with you to another eReader. Make your eReader totally open to whatever readers want and you gain an instant advantage.
2. Perhaps team up with Google Editions.
3. Use Android for its promise and unlock Android Apps. Android Apps would instantly provide a new dimension.  
4. Very good note-taking. No eReader has a satisfying note-taking experience and no eReader comes close to being an eWriter. If a new entrant provides this while keeping the price under $200 it has an instant, huge advantage.
5. A very good keyboard – The Kindle 3′s keyboard is small and lacks a numbers row. Nook and Sony Reader Touch Edition use strange on-screen keyboards. An old-fashioned physical keyboard would be a huge bonus.   
6. Add a full-fledged browser. eInk might not be made for browsing but let readers make up their own minds. Let the browser work freely with WiFi and users and developers will figure out ways to make it work.
7. Free Books. Figure out a way to get 10,000 indie authors’ books and 10,000 published authors’ backlist books (one for each author perhaps) for free and on the device by default. Figure out a way to load up a 2GB SD card with the 2,000 most popular public domain books and include it.
8. Make genre specific features – Privacy and Auto-Hide for romance and erotica. Predictions and character clue-books (or character dictionary) for mystery novels.
9. Add eReader tracking so that if someone loses their eReader you can help them figure out where it is.

There are lots of things that can be added to help readers. Perhaps you add-in 3 to 4 solid features that no other eReader has and find half a dozen smaller features that are very helpful. Combine them into one package (on top of the MVR and Contender feature-sets) and you suddenly have the edge over Kindle 3 and Nook 2.

Optimal Strategy to take on Kindle 3, Nook 2

The best way would be to identify a niche the Big 3 aren’t serving well -

1. The Add-on niche for Kindle and Nook owners.  
2. An eReader for really young children that’s damage proof and unbreakable.
3. A waterproof eReader for reading in the tub, by the pool, and on the beach.
4. An eReader optimized for school.
5. eWriter + eReader for college.
6. Large screen eReader for under $200.
7. eReader optimized for a profession like medicine or law.
8. eReader optimized for comics or manga.
9. eReader for academics with exceptional PDF support and features like two column reading.
10. An eReader for business with enhanced privacy functions and print to eReader function (print to eReader from your PC or phone). Also, easy sharing and editing of documents.

Create something that meets the needs of a reasonably sized niche perfectly. Out-Kindle the Kindle by cutting out everything that niche doesn’t need and making extraordinarily focused decisions on what features and capabilities the device has.

Once you’ve conquered that particular niche you can think about expanding to related niches and eventually to the entire eReader market.

It makes little sense to attack Kindle 3 and Nook 2 head-on

Kindle has all the eReader brand recognition i.e. eReader = Kindle. Kindle 3 sets an exceptionally high bar. Amazon will undercut you on both eReader and eBook prices. B&N has physical stores. Kindle, Sony Reader, and Nook have strong brands and customer loyalty and (except for B&N) lots of money backing them up.

It seems madness to compete. Luckily you don’t have to compete head-on.  

The best way to compete is by focusing on a niche and winning it and then expanding to the nearest/easiest niche. You start with an eReader that’s optimized for business. After that you feel Doctors and Engineers seem the most promising niches that would require the least modifications – So, go after them next.

If the eReader market really is going to hit tens of millions of eReaders per year then there will be niches like business and young kids that will be under-served. They will be niches with sales of a few million eReaders a year in 2011 and perhaps much more down the line. Niches that will want their Kindleized Kindle i.e. an eReader that was dreamt up specifically for them with exactly the features that they desire and an uncompromised approach. To them the Kindle 3 will seem much like the iPad seems to us readers – We are surprised that a LCD screen device is pretending to be a dedicated reading device and they would be surprised that a device that doesn’t allow writing is trying to replace businesses’ use of paper.

eReaders might soon be such a huge market that it creates an opportunity for new entrants to focus on a sub-market and do exactly what the Kindle has done – create a device that is so perfect for its audience that it makes generalist devices seem poor in comparison.

Filed under: eBook Reader Devices Tagged: | ereader strategy, kindlesquared strategy