The current rivalry between Apple and Amazon, and the price war that‘s brewing is just plain bizarre. Amazon claims to currently sell most e-books for $9.99 (though prices vary widely above and below this price point), which in the opinion of most consumers is a somewhat fair price for a digital commodity. What Amazon does is buy the books at wholesale prices from publishers and sell it at $9.99, which is often at a loss. The advantage for Amazon is that this helps develop a market for its Kindle and helps popularize e-books. The publishers on the other hand are paid the wholesale price, which is quite often much higher than $9.99. And lastly the consumers gain by getting e-books at a cheap and wallet friendly price. Looks like everyone’s a winner right? Well not exactly. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘apple’
The weird price wars
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Is iPad a game changer for e-books?
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Apple’s iPad which released a few days ago promises to change the way we read digital books. Armed with a 9.7” touch screen display, it certainly looks capable of doing so. In comparison, the e-ink powered readers, like Kindle, look like black and white silent films in a color talkie era. But will the iPad really deliver on its promise?
Well there is no easy answer to that. I think it falls somewhere between yes and no.
While a number of commentators and analysts have been raving about how the color screen is what e-books have been waiting for, I think they are missing the point that most of the books published are predominantly black and white. So having a color screen isn’t really going make that much of a difference for standard fiction and non-fiction books. It’s true that you are going to get fabulous 3-D page turns, page backgrounds and all that other jazz, but given a choice between charging a device after reading say a book or two (10 hours) to practically charging the device once or twice a month, I think I would prefer e-ink any day, more so if I was going to use the device only as an e-reader. (In spite of the perceived shortcomings of e-ink devices that the press keep raving about) .
What’s going to really matter is readability – meaning how long can you read off the screen before your eyes tell you it’s time to do something else. Having read extensively off LCD monitors in the past, I know how painful it can be to read for long on normal screens. E-ink on the other hand remains a pleasure to read from, and so far I have had very low eye fatigue. So what remains to be seen is if the iPad’s LED display will match up to e-ink in terms of readability. (more…)
My take on the iPad
Thursday, January 28th, 2010Apple displayed its “latest creation” at the much talked about “event” yesterday. The device dubbed iPad (wonder which genius came up with that name), is basically a very large iPhone, without the phone of course. The device sports a 9.7” display capable of displaying a resolution of 1024X768-pixels. It’s got most of the iPhone’s features like capacitive multitouch, accelerometer, compass, flash memory storage as well as a speaker and a microphone. It supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G (3G plans from Apple’s beloved AT&T). Under the hood, it runs on a new custom, 1 GHz processor (the A4) that Apple developed and has a rated battery life of 10 hours with a standby time of about a month. And the non 3G version starts at $500. So with that price point it seems like a sweet deal.
Here’s my take on the device – Appearances aren’t everything!! (more…)
iTablet – the next Kindle Killer ???
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009There has been a lot of speculation over whether or not Apple will introduce a Tablet version of the iPod Touch. So far rumors have indicated that Apple might just introduce such a device. The device is rumored to have a large 10 inch screen, which many seem to think would be ideal to use as an e-book reader. Brian Chen of Wired.com makes an interesting case as to how Apple could re-invent the e-book marketplace with the device. He makes a very novel suggestion that Apple might sell books on iTunes and allow the sale of individual chapters of a book as well. The idea being that you should be able to buy sections of books when wanted, just like how you can now buy songs instead of complete albums on iTunes. Its a great idea, and as he points out, students who often have to refer individual chapters in different expensive text-books would be the primary gainers. He also suggests that people, say sci-fi fans, may also prefer to buy individual stories instead of entire collections. Being a long time fan of anthology collections , I’d say this is very far fetched. For one, unlike music, I don’t think people buy an entire book just to read one story, or a couple of stories. Reading anthologies in my opinion is more about sampling work from different authors or seeing how a single author evolved over time or what a single author is capable of (apart from enjoying some well crafted tales). Besides that, Amazon may be already beating Apple to this concept. You can now buy a select number of single stories at the store, or so it seems.( I’ve seen Asimov’s Robot Visions available for about 79 cents.) So should iTunes offer stories as he visualizes, I doubt it will be that big a game changer. That apart, I wonder what kind of battery life the device will have. I imagine with a bright 10 inch color display, the batteries will run down quite frequently with constant use and I’d hate to constantly charge the device while reading. Lastly, the article contends that the tablet will be able to do a lot more than the average e-book reader (play music, watch video, run applications, surf the net etc.). Well, I’d say – so can the average netbook 
. You don’t need an expensive tablet for that. All said and done, I really don’t think that the Apple tablet is a serious contender for the Kindle’s throne.
In the end, as I have said earlier, it boils down to pricing. After all, to quote Steve Jobs:
It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.
And the one’s that do read aren’t in a hurry to leave their dead tree books behind. After all, thanks to a vibrant second hand marketplace, most dead tree books can be bought at extremely cheap prices (in comparison to their digital counterparts), and can be disposed off as well. If Apple can come up with a price point and business model for e-books that correctly reflects the benefits of going digital, I’m sure in the future they’d be able corner the e-book market as well. Just getting out a gorgeous tablet isn’t really going to cut it.
I'm Elroy Serrao, a technologist, photographer, and part time blogger from India.
I love to design web sites, program in php and rails in my free time and of course go trekking and clicking pictures in the great outdoors.
I'm from Mumbai, and am an alumnus of Mumbai University and NMIMS. 
