• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Apps
    • App Store
    • Audio Reader
    • Good e-Reader News
  • Contact
    • Advertise
  • Media
    • Radio Show
    • Videos
  • News
    • Amazon Kindle
    • Android
    • Audiobooks
    • Barnes and Noble
    • Bookselling
    • Digital Publishing
    • e-Books
    • e-Paper
    • e-Readers
    • Kobo
  • Newsletter
  • Reviews
  • Good e-Reader Store
    • Cart
    • Customer Support
    • My Account

Good e-Reader

The latest news on Audiobooks, eBooks and eReaders

Feature: Why e-Reader and Tablet Companies Fail – Another View

December 4, 2012 By Paul Biba Leave a Comment

Car loan after bankruptcy

On December 2, Michael Kozlowski wrote a feature about  Why e-Reader and Tablet Companies Fail.  To make a long article short, Michael posited that companies fail because of lower-quality devices, sub-par hardware, the lack of savvy marketing and press relations and cutthroat competition, among other factors. While I completely agree with Michael in everything he says, I think that he has missed the most important factor in these companies’ failure – the lack of an ecosystem.

Michael looks at products from Pandigital, Cool-ER, and Entourage, to name a few, as stand-alone gadgets that the consumer wants to buy. In fact, they are not stand-alone products, but are part of an e-reading ecosystem. The average consumers may not be interested in the tech specs of a product (or may not even understand the specs if they read them), but always want to know what the product can do for them. As @bookofjoe said in a recent tweet, “All tablet companies but Apple spend big ad $ telling us how great machines are instead of great things we can do with them. Fatal error.”

The average consumer wants to read books and read them in the simplest, easiest manner available. None of the failed companies have accomplished this for the consumer. (Note that I said the “average consumer”. Until it moved into the mainstream, e-reading was dominated by techies who knew how to download surf, connect their machines to computers, use SD cards, etc. This is no longer the case. The consumer, now, is a group may have a very little knowledge of, and absolutely no interest in, the techie components of e-reading.) Every single one of the companies that have failed have failed to make the distinction between a techie and a reader. Early readers were techies, readers today are not.

Look at the success of Apple, Amazon, Kobo, and B&N. What do they have in common? Good products, of course, but also a developed an ecosystem that makes it simple and painless for a non-techie reader to get books. The reader doesn’t even need a computer to buy books. Just a few taps on the e-reader and the book is there. A typical example would be a friend of mine who is a retired chemical engineer. He has never connected his Kindle to his computer, and doesn’t know how to. He uses his iPhone to take pictures but doesn’t know that he can download them to iTunes. He has never even updated his iPhone. This lack of tech-savvy knowledge is typical of most of my friends, but they all own e-readers from the major companies and are voracious purchasers of books.  All on their do-it-all e-readers.

This is a major market for e-readers; people with little or no technical knowledge who just want an ecosystem that works and makes things easy. Why do you think that the iPad is so popular and other tablets are struggling? Ease of use and a rich ecosystem. Of course, all the things that Michael says in his article are true, but since he is a techie himself, he misses, as do most techies, the fact that many people have no interest in, and perhaps an aversion to, all aspects of “techie.”

It’s the ecosystem, baby!

Paul Biba

Paul Biba is a retired corporate international lawyer who has worked in 53 countries. Since he is a very fast reader he came to ebooks out of self-defense in order to avoid carrying a suitcase of books on his travels around the world. An early ebook adopter, he has read on Palms, Pocket PCs and practically every device that has been out there. After being a frequent contributor to TeleRead.com, the oldest ebook/epublishing blog on the net, Paul became TeleRead’s Editor-in-Chief, a position he recently resigned. Send Paul an email to paulkbiba@gmail.com

Share
Tweet
Share
Vote
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Filed Under: e-Reader News



Primary Sidebar

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on E-mail

Good E-Reader

Tweets by Goodereader
  • 10,000 Arabic books have been digitized to ebooks 10,000 Arabic books have been digitized to ebooks
  • Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 will be released in 2019 Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 will be released in 2019
  • Boyue Likebook Mimas Review Boyue Likebook Mimas Review
  • The Kobo Aura One is discontinued The Kobo Aura One is discontinued
  • Boyue Likebook Mimas vs Onyx Boox Note Boyue Likebook Mimas vs Onyx Boox Note
  • E-Ink Color E-Paper is delayed until 2019 E-Ink Color E-Paper is delayed until 2019




Copyright © 2019 Good e-Reader - Privacy Policy - Terms of Use - Shipping and Return Policy - Refund Policy - Customer Support