The race is on and that’s good for the eBook market. Three strong competitors (Apple, Google and Amazon) in this market will fuel the need for more content and for enhanced content. The issue will be can publishers keep up? There is so much happening right now with clearing of eRights, back list conversion and dealing with just getting the current product to ePub, how will publishers get to the next stage of dynamic and interactive books?
Many purest will argue that publishers shouldn’t rush to do that because the end product is not what a book or eBook is meant to be, but I don’t think we need to look far to see sign how a traditional medium (music, television) has been morphed into something that presents itself very differently than just five years ago. I can remember my audiophile friend saying music as an MP3 isn’t music; today you couldn’t pry his iPod away from him. So times are changing and I think we all realize that and I still maintain that book publishers need to be thinking about how a book is an experience and that experience needs to be high quality to each individual consumer regardless if it is an ink on paper or a pixel on screen experience. The publishers that do that will be the big winners when it comes to having the right content to ride the wave as these three device manufacturers put on their boxing gloves.
Apple’s iPad and the expected entry of others such as Google into the e-book space will cut Amazon’s share of e-book sales from 90% to 35% over the next five years, writes Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang in a research report Tuesday:
Near term, we suspect that the iPad and the new eBook agency pricing model, which requires that Amazon increase retail prices to be more consistent with Apple’s pricing, will provide Kindle with the most market share headwind. Going forward, we can envision a scenario where Apple, Amazon, and Google eventually split the market. Therefore, we expect Amazon’s share of eBooks business to fall from 90% currently to about 35% over the next five years.
Noting that Amazon shares have underperformed the sliding S&P 500 ahead of — and in the wake of — the iPad’s launch, Credit Suisse analyst note that “Apple’s entry into the eBooks market stoked fears about the growth outlook for Amazon’s core book franchise, the balance of power between Amazon and book publishers, and the future of Amazon’s promising Kindle device.”
Credit Suisse analysts also note that Google appears to be in the midst of an effort to launch its own tablet device: “In addition to its books project, Google is also reportedly working with HTC (maker of Google’s Nexus One phone) on a tablet device. While few details on this device are public, images of the Chrome OS on a new tablet device appeared on Google’s Chromium website, sparking the speculation that the Google tablet is closer to launch than most expect.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/02/16/analyst-amazon-e-book-share-to-fall-from-90-to-35/