Sony and Google vs. Kindle in Ebook Wars
After Sony’s deal with Google Books to adopt the open ePub format and offer its customers half a million books free to download on their Sony Readers, the battle for dominance in the ebook business has officially begun.
Amazon, who doesn’t support the ePub format, is currently offering 300.000 titles to the Kindle Store and controls 45% of the ereader market, while Sony’s share is just 30%.
More players are entering the promising market of e-book readers.
All of them support the industry standard ePub format, and give the consumer the opportunity to access to seven million ebooks on Google Books:
- British publisher and ebook reader manufacturer Interead will sell Google Books on Coolerbooks for the COOL-ER eReader;
- Asus has recently presented an innovative dual screen color e-reader, that will be followed by an entry model which will be cheaper than Sony’s and Amazon’s counterparts, currently priced at $199 and $299 respectively;
- Plastic Logic will introduce an ereader compatible with Barnes and Noble’s ebook store next year.
Will Amazon be able to sustain its business model over time and maintain an early lead on the market? The Kindle is not the iPod of e-book readers and it may never obtain that status in the consumer’s mind.
Opening to the ePub format and offering free downloads of out of copyright books could be a viable strategy, but the clash between The Open Book Alliance and Google Books suggests it won’t become a reality anytime soon.
A study from Forrester tried to figure out the retail price that US consumers would consider a bargain for an ebook reader and the sweet spot falls in between $50 and $99.
How much would you pay for an ebook reader? The good news is that the more competitors join the e-book arena, the sooner prices will fall and ebook readers will be affordable enough to reach the mass market.
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