Is Kindle the new iPhone? February 10, 2009
Posted by chetan in : 3G, 4G, AORTA, ARPU, IP Strategy, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications, Mobile Content, Mobile Ecosystem, Mobile Entertainment, US Wireless Market, Wireless Value Chain, Worldwide Wireless Market , trackbackAmazon is slowly but surely trying own the eBook market and has done well with its cautious Kindle launch. However, to have the platform universally adopted, there are still a number of short comings and challenges.
Price - It is still $160 overpriced. Not a mass market device just yet.
Book economics - There will be resistance from the publishers - the reach of the platform is not there so they are making it up in volumes
Beyond CDMA - To have a global subscriber base, amazon needs GSM variants quickly
Apple - iReader could blow out Amazon off the market if it doesn’t secure the market quickly
Google - They are getting the content digitized, they have the OS, they have the OEM partnerships, they have the biggest reach available to mankind, they have the analytics, they can deliver a knock-out blow
Amazon IMHO is making the classic market-reach miscalculation. They should go aggressive in seeding the market with the device and make money on the downloads. The bigger reach will enable them to experiment with some really interesting advertising business models as well.
Comments»
[...] Is Kindle the new iPhone? [...]
Hi Chetan
I don’t understand why publishers are resisting it. It offers them another channel to distribute and they still own the content.
In the short-term, it will be incremental revenue to their traditional business model. In the long-term, they need to rething their model.
- Kedar