Comments on: Newsflash: Amazon is NOT ‘dominating’ the e-book market OR winning the e-book war

By: Rick Toone

Rick Toone — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:37:32 +0000

Seems to me the bigger idea in this conversation is not who has the most downloads/market share or what device will work in the country you live in but rather the availability of a digital book.

As a content aggregator myself for children’s books, I find the press and whoopla surrounding the Kindle to be a great advantage for all. It has given rise to acceptance of ebooks no matter what device you use to read on. If Apple comes out with a “kindle killer” it will only appeal to a limited number of people because of the price point but it will add more clout to the platform of ebooks.

This is still a small market but one on the rise and as readers or publishers we all need to look at the bright side and realize this conversation is good for all of us. As an industry it will evolve, new readers will appear and country barriers will be broken. Time and support will tell the real story and you can bet that the history books will be touting the Kindle as a leader in ebook publishing no matter what their current market share is.

By: J. Chng

J. Chng — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:22:22 +0000

I agree with Joanna there. We do not have the Kindle in Singapore (or the entire Southeast Asia). And I am also annoyed with Scribd for not selling e-books from non-US authors as well. Does everything have to be US-centric?!

I self-publish on Smashwords which seems to be a good site for e-books at the moment.

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:34:04 +0000

Joanna,

Maybe if we get a high profile bankruptcy in a few years.

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:51:34 +0000

I’m glad you bought this up as I am getting increasingly annoyed by how everyone ignores the Australian/Asia Pacific market! We don’t have Sony e-readers here, let alone the Kindle (which there are no plans to sell here). We can buy them abroad and hack them, but that’s not exactly ideal. I read ebooks on the iPhone and desperately hope the Apple tablet will address the imbalance.
It also seems strange that sites like Scribd.com won’t sell ebooks from non-US authors, or even let us buy them (last time I tried, it wouldn’t let me buy). Ebooks are by nature international and as a self-published author, I hold the rights.
Do you have any thoughts on when ebooks might actually be truely globalised? as opposed to US-centric!

Thanks, Joanna

By: martinkochanski

martinkochanski — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:56:58 +0000

I doubt that Amazon will seriously want to attack the European market. It isn’t really an international company in the sense that (for example) Apple is. It’s merely seven businesses in seven countries, and it can’t even present a unified interface to its suppliers, who have to establish separate commercial relationships with each national Amazon company.

Moreover, the Kindle is not designed for international use. The iPod’s keyboard layout can be switched to German or French or Italian or Spanish or Polish in a second or two. So can the Sony Reader’s. To switch the Kindle from one national layout to another, you need to throw the machine away and buy a new one.

It looks to me as if Amazon’s strategy is to use the Kindle device to establish market dominance in one middle-sized, prosperous, not-even-diglot country, for Amazon as an e-book supplier and secondarily (and possibly temporarily) for the Kindle format as an e-book format. That dominance can then be expanded to the other six countries that Amazon operates in. Channel and format dominance is much cheaper to establish and maintain than dominance in hardware, especially when so many other hardware businesses operate truly internationally.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:35:22 +0000

A couple of points:

First, these stats refer to e-reader and not e-book sales. Because e-book sales occur much more frequently, they are a better estimate of each company’s control of the market. According to Pubtrack, Amazon controlled 4.67 times the e-book market share that Sony did from January-July 2009. More importantly, Kindle showed growth throughout this period and overtook PC downloads of e-books to become the largest platform in July 2009.
SOURCE: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6686612.html?industryid=47151

Second, I cannot find the methodology of the study, making it difficult to evaluate its conclusions. If it simply asked consumers which e-reader they own (vs. focusing on purchases in the last month or 6 months, etc.), the resulting figures would necessarily be impacted by the length of time each company has offered devices. Sony has been in the market in the US since 2006 while Amazon has only been in the market since 2007. This means that for 1/3 of the time that Sony has been selling devices, Amazon was not — and yet Amazon has sold significantly more devices in the US.

By: Mags

Mags — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:06:46 +0000

And even looking at just anecdotal evidence, how many of us with non-Kindle reading devices have been approached in public and asked, “Is that a Kindle?”

At least in the U.S., Amazon has at least the perception of dominance.

Personally I think Sony, with its embrace of open standards and expansion of retail outlets, has more of an opportunity to break things open than Apple.

By: Rob Preece

Rob Preece — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:47:30 +0000

I agree that the mythical Apple tablet, which we’ve been obsessing about on this blog for a couple of years or so, is unlikely to directly compete with a $299 Kindle or a $199 Sony. I welcome Apple to the party but their pricing strategy has generally centered around the premium market rather than the mass market we’re looking for in the eBook world.

Rob Preece
Publisher

By: J.M. Skillman

J.M. Skillman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:18:13 +0000

If Apple makes a tablet/iPod touch that you can read outdoors in bright sunlight, has a battery life that lasts two weeks (7,500 page turns), will fit in my suit jacket pocket, is completely silent, runs without dissipating any heat, is non-proprietary and costs less than $300; THEN your argument might make sense. I am unaware of any display technology that will beat a dedicated eBook device.

By: HeavyG

HeavyG — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:54:37 +0000

“And it will kill the Kindle dead, dead, dead.”

No it won’t.

By: pond

pond — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:48:48 +0000

A couple of quibbles, Ficbot:

1. The 45% stat was, according to the TeleRead blog post, most likely a guess.

2. Of the guessed-at remaining 55%, Sony does not hold ‘almost all of it’ but rather a little over half.

You leave the impression that Sony outsells Amazon in the US market. The stats you refer to show Amazon outselling Sony — selling 50% more than Sony does, indeed.

Your other point, on global vs. US markets, is a good one. Amazon became enamored with the idea of a cell-phone partnership that would allow the Kindle to connect to the store and purchase and download books from wherever you are; and this has proved to be one of the most-appreciated features of the Kindle. But it has its downside, because sticking to this vision means Amazon has not been able to expand into other territories.

I wonder why Amazon, in ‘playing the sedulous ape’ to Apple’s iPod platform strategy, hasn’t developed a Kindle version of the iPod Touch, i.e. a wifi-only Kindle, that they could market worldwide.

By: Richard Askenase

Richard Askenase — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:31:42 +0000

Of Amazon does start selling the Kindle in UK soon as is rumored, then they could quickly dominate that market. Maybe this would open Europe (especially france) as well. Remember, the Kindle store is excellent and extensive and cheaper than the others. THIS is where they will dominate.

By: Aaron Pressman

Aaron Pressman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:55:02 +0000

It’s very hard to make sensible arguments based on this worldwide market share data without knowing the figures for the US (where Kindle is available) versus the rest of the world (no Kindle). I would suggest that if Kindle has 45% market share worldwide and isn’t even competing in much of the world, that it’s likely very dominant in the US. So in the one market where Kindle and Sony go head-to-head, Kindle is far ahead.

We’re still left with all the usual speculation and arguments about what that means in the future. Does the historical market share predict much about the future when Kindle will available more broadly, Sony has revamped products, Apple’s tablet arrives and other expected new entrants enter?

Also, I’m not sure I understand how it can be offensive that Kindle isn’t offered everywhere yet. I guarantee that the reason is NOT because Jeff Bezos doesn’t like England or thinks people in Japan can’t read or something. I’m sure it has to do with the economics of book buying habits, publishing contracts that treat every country market separately and maybe limits on manufacturing capacity.