Many of those people are already too deeply invested in Amazon's ecosystem to find their way out. "People who love reading, who read a book or two a week, are much more likely to be drawn to a dedicated device," he explains to WIRED. Stashing your books on its devices is as safe a bet as any. Rakuten is capable of thinking about, and surviving over, the long-term. That's important not just for the confidence that you're not buying off-brand junk-as someone who's tested several Kobo products, I can assure you it's not-but for the reassurance that there's less risk than you thought to investing in the Kobo ecosystem.
It's no Amazon, but it's not exactly either. Last year alone it tallied nearly $5 billion in revenue. You're likely most familiar with Buy.com, which Rakuten acquired in 2010, but the easiest way to think of it is as the Amazon of Japan. More important than Kobo's actual numbers, though, are those of its parent company, Rakuten, one of the world's largest ecommerce companies that's currently in expansion mode. But Tamblyn stresses that the Kobo's focus has so far been on international markets, and that it has "significant global share," despite often being an afterthought stateside. And it's tempting to think of Kobo as the doomed underdog the name's still not very familiar to the U.S. How good a digital product is doesn't mean much, though, if it's not going to be supported in a year or two. That's likely true, but in my experience doesn't always result in a better user experience. Kobo is "less automated" than Amazon's algorithmic rigor, curated with more of a human touch. Tamblyn insists that the difference boils down to approaches to discovery. Though Tamblyn describes his company and Amazon as "effectively peers" in quantity and quality of offerings (aside from content that comes from Amazon's own publishing arm), the Kobo bookstore can feel jumbled and anemic in practice, versus the slickly produced and fully stocked Kindle Store. That's not to say Kobo's perfect there's a selection trade-off here.
And so far, unlike Amazon, it hasn't used its customers as leverage in publisher spats.
EPUB READER FOR KINDLE FIRE 2017 SOFTWARE
But by having an integrated hardware and software experience, Kobo gives its customers more direct, frictionless access to content than anyone but Amazon. Kobo's hardly the only digital book retailer around Barnes & Noble still moves plenty of merchandise through its Nook app, and upstart subscription service Oyster recently embraced retail as well. Based on its specs, the Glo HD comes about as close as you can get. "We asked ourselves what characteristics would they want in a device to make the jump to e-reading." Not surprisingly, they wanted a device that feels like a book. "With this particular device, we went to people who self-declare as being attached to paper," says Michael Tamblyn, Kobo's president and chief content officer. Both are front-lit, though the Voyage finds a small advantage by automatically adjusting the brightness to best suit your surrounding conditions. The two use the same Carta E-Ink technology. The Glo HD also doesn't appear to be cutting many hardware corners elsewhere to make up the cost it's just as light as the Voyage, and only very slightly thicker.
The Kobo Glo HD won't be available in the US until May 1, but when it arrives it'll bring with it a display every bit as pixel-packed as Amazon's stunning Kindle Voyage-at a $70 discount. In fact, it's got competition that's more serious than you'd think. But the introduction this week of an e-reader that both matches the top-end Kindle's marquee feature and severely undercuts its price is a reminder that Amazon hasn't monopolized the market yet. That's fair it was among the first in the US, and with the quiet retreats of Sony and Barnes & Noble's Nook line, it's among the last. We're almost at a point where the Kindle name is, like Kleenex to tissues, interchangeable with e-reader.
0 kommentar(er)
