Kindle II: la competencia pondrá los excesos en su lugar

Para cerrar lo dicho antes, Barnes & Noble anuncia este lunes el lanzamiento de un nuevo lector electrónico, que sin duda encauzará los despropósitos de Kindle a un carril normal. Algunas de las ideas que Lhotka expusiera, forman parte del modelo de negocio de Barnes:

Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore offering its customers seamless access to more than 700,000 titles, including hundreds of new releases and bestsellers at only $9.99, making it the world’s largest selection of eBooks available in one place. The company expects that its selection will increase to well over one million titles within the next year, inclusive of every available eBook from every book publisher and every available eBook original, which is a fast growing marketplace.

Dice Larry Dignan en ZDNet:

(...) Barnes & Noble will offer the eReader application—a product of its acquisition of Fictionwise—that supports wireless and wired access. Barnes & Noble also aims for more screens, free downloads and more portability.
(...) Barnes & Noble will support the open EPub e-book standard, which is “good for the consumer.”
(...) The Barnes & Noble e-book store will have access to 700,000 titles for $9.99;
Public domain books from Google will be available (and are included in the 700,000 title tally);
Lynch said that the Barnes & Noble e-book store will top 1 million titles shortly;
Barnes & Noble’s eReader application is device agnostic.

La conclusión de Dignan: el negocio recién comienza, y mejorará con mayor competencia en el mercado.

My take: The big question here is whether the Barnes & Noble partnership with Plastic Logic will truly be disruptive to the Kindle. My hunch is that it will be. Although the Kindle is perceived to be a customer relationship management device by some, the latest flap over DRM is an issue. In addition, no one would call the Kindle cheap by any stretch. By planning on opening its store to more devices and offering an e-reader that’s the size of a standard sheet of paper—in between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX—the Barnes & Noble and Plastic Logic partnership has a good chance.

For instance, the Barnes & Noble-Plastic Logic news is enough to freeze any plans I have to buy a Kindle 2. I was already on the fence thinking an iPod touch would be my next e-reader. What’s a few more months to see what Plastic Logic’s reader looks like?

The bigger picture here is that the e-reader game is just starting and the market will develop over the next five years or so. Simply put, new devices will continue to emerge. Here’s a look at how Forrester Research sees the market developing.