Early at the end of January, when iPad was introduced to the market, not only there were many criticism across the Internet about its originality, Amazon also launched a ‘fight’ with one of the largest US book publisher MacMillan. Amazon removed the purchase button for all the MacMillan published books and only allow third-party to sell them on Amazon.com. In the past few years, as Amazon aims to obtain large market shares with the best selling ebooks price set at $9.99 each, books publishers have a limited profit margin. In addition, publishers usually sells actual books (averagely at $24 US) before selling eBook online. Hence, as Apple introduced iPad and launched the iBookstore online, publishers favored Apple’s suggestion to allow them to set the price and the online retail agent gain 30% of it as commission. Now the eBook price could be increased up to 12.99 to 14.99 US and Amazon accepted the same suggestion with its publishers. In the future, Kindle may share its current 60% market shares with iPad.
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Kindle vs. iPad
This negotiation progressed only in a few days and Kindle accepted the reality pretty quickly which limits its sales loss during its shutdown to MacMillan’s eBooks. And i realized how one product can affects others’ strategy to sustain its profit margins, and how amazon changes from a price setter to become a price taker following the inevitable Apple trend. As a consumer, iPad current prices is starting at $499, while Kindle is $330. I would rather buy a Kindle over iPad as Amazon is a long standing online retailer with stable and varied product online services.Plus, Kindle is more simple to use and has more reading oriented functions, such as instant dictionary and Wikipedia connect, and i guess the color display is not really a necessary feature when it comes down to almost $200 price difference. (A comparison table can be found here) Yet I like the Microsoft Courier concept the best and if it could be manufactured and sold in store I would immediately go line up and buy one, because its idea is just addicting and exciting, and its high level of interaction is just like playing a video game where you can have substantial control of your own computer. And I’m sure if Microsoft can produce this, thousands of Apple fans will turn to follow Microsoft.
Yet their latest product the Microsoft’s slate PC is simply like a Window fits into a iPad case, and i would not buy one as i have a laptop already even though its heavy carrying it around.
And here is just a random funny video that i found when i typed in iPad on youtube: iPad on MadTV