What caught my attention today was another article on Globe and Mail. It talks about the competition of Kobo and Kindle electronic book readers. Kindle is American based and is only sold through Amazon. Kobo is Canadian based and started as a project of the Canadian book company Indigo. Now it is an independent company with both domestic and international corporate partners including American borders and Walmart Canada.
One thing I have noticed is that with regards to technology, companies find it hard to gain sustainable competitive advantage. There are lots of companies capable of creating substitutes to any kind of technology. For example whenever Apple releases a new gadget, it takes only a couple of weeks before
multiple other companies release a similar product. Of course Apple is quite different because it has
established itself as a ‘cool’ brand and many people prefer their products just because of that.
Yet, when looking at products where no such strong brand is present, the consumer spends more time comparing the devices. These brands find it harder to come up with something that would provide them with a sustainable competitive advantage because all the technology is easy to copy. For example the Globe and Mail article just talks about how Kobo added a wireless feature to its device to catch up with Kindle which has also recently added this feature.
Categories