Sony, Google Fire Back at Amazon’s Kindle With… “Black Beauty”?
by Peter Kafka
Posted on March 19, 2009 at 8:54 AM PT
Want to buy an e-book reader but can’t decide between Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s version, the Reader?
Then you’re in the minority: Most folks are choosing Amazon’s (AMZN) device, even though Sony’s (SNE) sells for $60 less. Sony’s newest gambit to change that: A tie-up with Google (GOOG) that will add half a million free titles to the Sony’s book catalog.
The deal, announced this morning, will give Sony a catalog with some 600,000 titles — more than twice the number that Kindle sells. But given that these are public domain titles that anyone can sell, I’m not sure that this will do much for Sony. From the release:
“Books from Google will feature an extensive list of traditional favorites, including “The Awakening,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” and “Black Beauty,” as well as a number of items that can be more difficult for people to access. For example, literature lovers can find and read The Letters of Jane Austen in addition to “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma.” Also included are a number of titles in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages. People can search the full text of the collection, or they can browse by subject, author, or featured titles.
Give Sony props for rolling out an e-book reader well before Amazon did. But the Kindle has a huge marketing advantage over the Reader — the Sony product has yet to appear on the cover of Newsweek or The Daily Show, and it’s doubtful it ever will. More important, the Kindle has features the Reader can’t match — namely, the ability to download books and other stuff wirelessly.
All of which makes it hard to see the upside in Sony continuing to plow resources into this one — especially when it has more important battles to fight.
Comments
Amazon has done most of it right in marketing Kindle2. Already positioned as one of the leaders in Net sales, they’ve provided a technically sound product, and made it relatively uncomplicated to use.
They are poised to dominate both hardware and software markets!
Posted by Jay Theas at March 19th, 2009 at 5:18 pmBUT, they could very well blow the whole thing, and leave Sony to capitalize!
Amazon needs to take a lesson from the ISP wars of the early ’90’s. Dozens of regional, and national ISP’s, each forcing subscribers to use only the tools of that provider, were slugging it out trying to bury the other guy, and get rich doin’ it. The Net landscape was littered with the tiny bodies of proprietary failure, while Jim and Bill spent hundreds of millions trying to convince the world that there was only one way to go.
Lucky for us that their decisions to pretty much live-and-let-live proved the best way.
Apple pulled off the coup of the century with iPod, AND iTunes, AND Tunes Store!
“Here, take the song; 99 cents, please! Okay, it’s yours; do what you want with it”!
WE buy it, listen, cut cd’s, make play lists, add and delete, & archive as we choose; ON OUR OWN HARDWARE, at our own discretion! The beauty & simplicity of it puts iPod in the company of Kleenex & Frigidaire. There ARE other MP3 players out there, but the whole world thinks ‘iPod’!
Amazon must let go, NOW, and let the user control ALL of these same facets with Kindle2 AND the e-books! Apple has proved that method wins!
If Amazon continues to insist on controlling certain aspects of access, and storage, and archive, they are gonna blow a deal that could be as sweet as iPod, and iPhone!
Also, all that money that Sony will gladly take from them!!
Okay Amazon…. you got the ball; now mess up!!