MacDailyNews Note: Like iTunes, iBooks is the app. It connects to Apple’s iBookstore, just as iTunes connects to Apple’s iTunes Store.
Buchanan continues, “Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 US cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices? To screw Amazon.”
“The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks.. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware,” Buchanan writes.
“At this moment, Amazon owns ebooks. The book publishers’ fears are the same as the record labels with iTunes: They’re paranoid about losing control over pricing, and their own digital destiny. They’re worried that books are being undervalued, and that once people have the mindset that the price of an ebook is $US9.99, and not a penny more, they’re doomed,” Buchanan explains. “They needed an insurgent player: Apple.”
“Apple has advantages that Amazon didn’t have with music: Scale and technology. iTunes has just moved three billion iPhone apps. Apple’s sold over 250 million iPods,” Buchanan explains. “By contrast, Amazon’s sold an estimate 2.5-3 million Kindles since it debuted two years ago. Analysts predict Apple will sell twice as many iPads this year alone.”
MacDailyNews Take: The analysts that are predicting 5-6 million iPads sold this year are going to have to up their estimates; they’re too low.
Buchanan continues, “In terms of technology, e-ink looks old and busted and slow next to the iPad’s bright, colour display… An iPad can do more than books: Beautiful digital magazines, interactive textbooks, a dynamic newspaper. Oh, and it’s a computer that does video, apps, music. Amazon’s scrambling now to make a multitouch full colour Kindle after betting on e-ink, but that kind of development takes at least a year. Even if they churn out a full colour reader that is somehow better than the iPad, it likely won’t matter: It would just be a very nice reader to iPad’s everything else, and it would be nine months too late.”
“Price would’ve been Amazon’s major advantage over Apple too – being able to undercut Apple by setting whatever price they needed to compete would’ve been its ace in the hole against the iPad’s flashy colour screen, and everything else it can do. And now that’s poofed,” Buchanan writes. “Apple will be able to sell you ebooks for the exact same price as Amazon. By turning the publishers against Amazon, they’ve effectively dicked the Kindle over.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Kindle wasn’t cutting it, regardless of empty hyperbole from Bezos, willing accomplices in the media, and certain analysts. The publishing industry doesn’t have two decades for Amazon to maybe hit critical mass. Plus, Kindle is amateur-hour hardware (and software). Amazon doesn’t have the core competency to do such a device (or any device of any complexity, actually). Maybe Bezos could do an Amazon clip-on book light or something, if he wants to fool around with Amazon-branded hardware. If Amazon wants to sell e-books, then they need to forget about hardware devices — leave that to a real devices (hardware+software+services) company — and concentrate on their Kindle app for iPhone OS devices: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.