Apple

Why Amazon won’t necessarily win the e-book wars

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I got into a fairly heated debate with a friend (like I always do) today over recent developments in the e-book market. Namely, some industry analysts are making bold statements that Amazon will win the e-book wars (case in point, Om Malik’s post). I’m generally skeptical of such predictions, because the technology market evolves at such a rapid pace that “dominant” market positions are rapidly gained and lost. But I will attempt to develop this discussion a bit further.

I think when people talk about Amazon Kindle’s competitive position in the market, they usually compare it to two distinct set of competitors:

  1. “Direct” competitors, such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the upcoming Borders Kobo, Sony’s eReaders etc. The device play is a single-purpose device, hence directly competing with Kindle hardware.
  2. “In-direct” competitors, such as Apple’s iPad, and other future tablet devices. These competitors are in some sense “in-direct”, in that reading is just one of many key features, and Amazon can utilize them by providing Kindle apps, which to a large extent nullifies their threat and turns them into distribution channels.

If I may, Amazon’s competitive advantages against these competitors are usually seen as follows, in no particular order:

  • Brand power and experience in online retail.
  • First mover in driving e-books adoption, and hence enjoys higher market awareness as well as being further along on the learning curve compared to competitors.
  • Specifically against the iPad and iBooks, a much better book selection.
  • Again perhaps specifically against iBooks, cross-platform availability – PCs, Macs, other mobile devices. Or as some people say, Amazon gets it that it’s not about selling devices, but selling books.

I think people often discard brick and mortar players straight away (“what do they know about digital?”, “they are late to the game”), and then only focus on comparing Amazon and Apple. Probably most people in tech would see iPad as the Kindle’s biggest threat, and in that comparison, Amazon’s “it’s about selling books, not selling devices” mentality clearly gives people confidence in picking them as winners.

Frankly, my biggest concern with Apple in the e-book wars is how much organizational will they have in competing. How serious are they about it? After all, it is just one of many functions. If they are dead serious about it, they can do the following:

  • They will probably catch up in the size of the catalog;
  • they can definitely make a better user experience, by merit of tight hardware / software integration and far superior application experience;
  • They can also try to catch up in making iBooks available cross-platform, which is actually quite straightforward technology-wise since they use the ePub book format, so if the publishers allow it your books purchased in iBooks should be able to be viewed on any ePub reader on any platform – obviously this is the ideal world and there will be plenty of challenges;
  • And they can probably make “shady” moves like what they are doing with iAds – block Amazon as it is not an “independent” retailer, in the same way they are attempting to block AdMob because it’s not an “independent” ad network. I’m not suggesting I agree with this last tactic, but if they do something like that it becomes an aggressive device versus device play, which at the current sales rate, the iPad would have a far bigger installed base.

So it seems there’s plenty of strategies and tactics for Apple. Again, my biggest doubt is whether they have the bandwidth and the interest to compete with Amazon.

What about the brick and mortar guys? Well, interestingly there’s plenty of options here too, upon doing some research (frankly, I’ve ignored the Nook completely since its launch). I’ll focus specifically on Barnes & Noble, since in terms of market awareness they seem to be the most serious competitor to Amazon from the physical retail side. What are its competitive advantages, if any?

  • Perhaps surprisingly, more innovative features, such as the ability to lend a book to your friends (though severely limited, most likely due to publishers), and free in-store reading, to name a few. Obviously these aren’t killer features – yet – but they suggest that at least the Nook team is trying new ideas and not just playing catch up.
  • Physical retail presence. On the one hand, Kindle’s adoption has been severely limited by its lack of physical retail presence (which Amazon is finally addressing by moving into Target); on the other hand, B&N can seriously leverage its retail stores to sell Nooks – directly to the device’s target consumers. This is something that Amazon cannot easily match, and if done right, is a huge marketing vehicle – the obvious case study is how Apple uses retail.
  • Supporting the open ePub format. A huge fuss was made over this at the Nook’s initial launch – and while it might not matter that much yet (and plenty of proprietary formats have market dominance – e.g. Microsoft Office, or Adobe Flash), it is at least ammunition for marketing, and in the long run, the format wars may actually mean something (more on this later).
  • E-book retail experience through the Fictionwise acquisition. Fictionwise has probably been in the e-books business longer than Amazon, and prior to their acquisition was one of the largest independent e-book retailers. The Fictionwise team at least inspires some confidence in B&N’s capabilities in software and all things technology, and may bring them even deeper insight in the market landscape than competitors. And of course, Fictionwise understands how to support multiple platforms and have done so for a long time (much longer than Amazon in this regard? Since the Kindle for Mac app only came out recently) – it seems B&N needs to market this point a lot more.
  • Brand recognition. Sure, Amazon is one of the top brand in mind when it comes to online retail, but for book lovers B&N probably means a lot too – especially for mass-market to late stage adopters.

So I would say that from these points, B&N is at least a legitimate contender. Sure, they are playing catch up, and they are currently stumbling on execution somewhat (just from what I’ve casually read), but I wouldn’t discard them that easily. Two minor data points for consideration: the first is the somewhat suspect report from DigiTimes that Nook shipped more units than Kindle in March (via Crunchgear); and the second is the fact that they have released four firmware updates in roughly half a year – of course it means patching up lots of bugs, but you can also read it as the team being snappy and energetic about refining the user experience and adding features. Amazon on the other hand has been somewhat slow (at least in my personal feeling) in rolling out cross platform applications (Kindle for Mac seemed to take forever) and updating the device with new software features – of course, this is just based on my anecdotal experience.

Fundamentally, my problem with claiming “Amazon will eventually win” is that e-books are really just going through early adoption (and perhaps reaching the first stage of mass adoption), and there are still plenty of big problems that nobody has figured out yet. For example:

  • Technology wise, how do you address the use case of lending books? How can I lend you the book I bought on iBooks to your Nook? And it’s not just personal to personal lending, but even more importantly, how do libraries shift to e-books – how do they manage their database and support myriad devices? Would the format wars have a huge implication here? I’ve read somewhere someone comparing Amazon’s azw format to Betamax and ePub to VHS – I don’t think it necessarily holds, but it does highlight potential issues.
  • Business wise, what are the differentiating factors for e-book retailing, besides price and availability (catalog size and cross-platform support)? If we compare this to the evolution of physical retail, obviously we are at a very early stage: right now players are mainly competing on price and availability, which is perhaps similar to the early days of retail, where the player that had better distribution won – simply because its consumers could access its products. Surely there is vast unexplored space in how to create differentiated shopping experiences.
  • What is the function of current physical retail space, when more and more books are consumed digitally? Will players like B&N simply close its shops, or is there room for transforming the stores of physical bookshelves into socialized book shopping hubs (tied to the previous point)? Are there any other functions they could play?
  • Also, from an industry value chain perspective, are there alternative models with potential to disrupt? For example, currently players pursue a hardware + software strategy; would we see the rise of independent device makers that can support any e-book retailer (not just multi-purpose devices through apps)? Would we see specialist application developers that support multiple retailers and offer a superior user experience?
  • Moving further up the value chain, how do e-books dis-intermediate publishers? Amazon and Apple already support self publishing; it’s not too far-fetched to see them as replacing traditional publishers completely in future. If that happens, we would see a lot more exclusives – e.g. one author’s books are only available on Kindle, another one only on iBooks. And combining this with the previous point, can we envision specialist device makers as the new “retailers” and the Amazon et al as the new “publishers”? Conversely, the existing traditional publishers can obviously step into this role themselves and retain their position in the value chain – if Amazon, Apple and B&N all become cross-platform, it ironically opens up the door for exclusive deals, since the consumers can still get the books they want on their devices, just from different retailers for different books. This is just one of many potential ways retailers can differentiate.

Looking at these open questions, I think it’s safe to say that this market still has a long, long way to go. I do not challenge that Amazon is the leader in this space currently, but I dare say the market is still up for grabs, and different competitors bring different competitive advantages to the table. Amazon is certainly well positioned – hence the conservative title of this post – but to say it’s game over and Amazon will definitely be victorious, well, is premature. And really, critics do it all the time – remember how many doubters of the iPad there were in January? And another one of my favorites – techies talking down Hulu when it was first announced back in 2007. Do people even remember the other online video startup that the whole tech world was going crazy over back then?

Holding off from buying iPad 1.0; eager to buy iPad 2.0?

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I think I qualify as an Apple fan. I bought an iPod in 2004, back when it was still black and white displays. I also have bought two different generations of iPod nanos, an 2nd gen iPod shuffle, a 1st gen iPod Touch, and I finally made my first MacBook purchase last year. I’ve also bought an iPhone 3G and now use a 3GS. I have an iMac at home back in Beijing; my dad is thinking of buying an Apple server for his office (though I strongly discouraged him about it).

When the iPad was first announced, I quickly made the decision that I wanted one, and I justified my decision by telling myself that it would be an laptop replacement for school. I’m pretty big on paperless, and prefer reading cases on my laptop instead of printing them out; so the dream product for me (for this purpose) would be a tablet with a stylus to take notes. The iPad doesn’t support a stylus, but from the original announcement, and the fact that there’s plenty of iPhone apps that support PDF viewing, I thought I could justify splurging $500 on the iPad. (And yes, I decided fairly early on I only wanted the $499 version. I don’t need 3G access and from my previous usage statistics I don’t need big storage.)

However, when the iPad reviews came out last Friday and the product shipped last Saturday, I realized that this 1st gen device does not pass as a laptop replacement, even for the relatively lightweight usage of school (email, PDF, and some basic Office apps). Then again, I’m thinking of using the device in the sense of a traditional computing paradigm, whereas from the onset Apple was looking at the device as an iPhone-esque paradigm, a closed system and a tightly controlled user experience.

The tradeoffs are numerous and huge in implications. Jobs and Apple criticized netbooks for being a device of compromise which doesn’t really excel at doing anything; they claimed that the iPad is “magical” and “revolutionary” in that it sets out to accomplish what netbooks were originally intended to do – convenient access to basic computing tasks (email, web, video) – without sacrificing the user experience. What was sacrificed was an open file system; multi-tasking; flash; multiple channels to access and purchase software. To state the obvious, the iPad copies iPhone’s user environment, rather than that of the MacBook.

This makes the iPad, as it is, primarily an entertainment device. There is nothing wrong per se with this positioning; Jobs’ hyperbole that the product is “revolutionary” still has some merit, in the sense that the device is beautifully intuitive to people with little prior experience with computers. The iPad to computing is akin to the Flip to video recording, or compact cameras to photography. It’s an entry level device (albeit a luxurious one) designed for the mass consumer.

Interestingly, this design philosophy has sparked a philosophical debate among heavyweight bloggers: Doctorow from Boing Boing fears that the iPad era means an era of stifled grassroots innovation and creativity (users are “infantilized” – kids can only play with it, but are restricted from exploring it and programming it – unless you hack it first), while Gruber argues that there will still be creative kids. I’m more inclined towards supporting Gruber’s position. The proportion of users who are interested in programming may decline, but that’s more due to computing becoming accessible to all rather than there being fewer aspiring programmers. I would even argue that the App Store, closed and arbitrary as it is, has leveled the playing ground a lot more for new programmers (ease of distribution and access to users), and therefore there should be more aspiring programmers than ever before.

That being said, the geek in me craves for a more open product than the iPad. I want the flexibility of having access to the file system, of having more than just the App Store to go to find software, and I need multitasking. I need to be able to type up a word document while also doing some web search. Apple has a pretty good history of improving its products – just look at the 1st gen iPhone and see how much it has improved (no 3G, no App Store – in hind-sight can you imagine people actually bought it?) – and give it ten months and I might be seriously tempted to get a 2nd gen iPad.

Apple’s major releases today

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There’s an Apple event today, and as expected all the major tech blogs have been flooded with coverage from the iPod-only event. I skimmed through the coverage on Techcrunch, Engadget, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, TUAW etc. The gist of the announcements are these:

Hardware side:

  • New iPod Touches. Pretty expensive at $399 for the 64GB ones. Besides the memory bump, the CPU has also been upgraded to the one used in the iPhone 3GS, which should make this a serious gaming / networking device (Apple made comparisons with the PSP and NDS). The letdown, at least from the tech press perspective, is that the new iTouch doesn’t have a camera. Rumors are flying this is because of a engineering issue, not because of a conscious design choice.
  • New Nanos, with a video camera and FM radio (besides other new features), making this a general purpose portable entertainment device. This is probably the biggest hardware release of the day.
  • New Shuffles. More colors, cheaper.
  • New iPod Classics. Improved storage, same price. This is really more of an afterthought.

Software side:

  • iPhone / Touch OS 3.1. I’ve done my upgrading already. Wondering if it breaks tethering on AT&T, as rumored.
  • iTunes 9, with some new features. Perhaps the most important one for iPhone users is the ability to manage / organize apps on iTunes instead of on the phone (so less dragging apps across screens)

For the details on any of those bullets, just head over to any major tech blog or Apple’s own webpage.

Some thoughts:

The iPod lineup is certainly diversifying and evolving from just music to all entertainment. Apple has been marketing the gaming abilities of the Touch; now the Nano seems to be aiming at Flip’s niche. But really, at this point, the gamers / amateur video directors who will switch to the Apple camp from PSP / NDS and Flip respectively are the casual players. The iPhone and iTouch are great for games, but for a different breed of games – the gaming experience is drastically different (just think of the Wii vs. the Xbox 360 / PS3). It almost feels like that Apple has too many opportunities to explore right now, and needs to make some conscious choices about what to pursue and what not to pursue.

Take gaming as an example. Positioning itself as a serious player in the space is very different compared to a hardware maker which also supports some games. If Apple is actively and seriously considering this space, it needs to be courting developers, and possibly peripheral makers (or consider some hardware functionality add-ons itself, like an external game-pad) – as opposed to just acting as the gate-keeper for apps.

And for the new Nano, if it does turn out to be a major competitor to the Flip, and Apple does care about taking a stake in that niche market, then Apple will have to make customizations and modifications of future models that put much more focus on the video-making aspects of the device.

I guess what I’ve been trying to say, and perhaps repeating myself here, is that I’m a firm believer that any device should have a focused purpose (despite the convergence trend). It’s fine for the PS3 / Xbox 360 to be able to support Netflix, web-browsing etc., but at the end of the day, the device’s main purpose is to play games. In the case of Apple, the iPod line-up is now converging with several other markets (portable gaming / video-making). Apple can either continue its current path of including these extra functionality as additional value propositions, or really start diversifying and entering these separate categories. This is a big strategic choice, and it’s perfectly fine to remain focused on music as the core proposition. Personally I think it would be a challenge to be competing in so many different markets where Apple has little experience. Regardless, it would be very interesting to observe how this develops.

Why the Palm Pre has been subpar

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As the inaugural post for this blog, I wanted to summarize some thoughts on why the Palm Pre has not lived up to the hype. There has been recent discussions how the Pre is far from meeting Sprint’s sales targets; earlier back there were also some talks of Palm cutting back on production. This is of course in sharp contrast to the fanfare we’re used to of recent iPhone launches (long lines, stock outs etc. – from personal experience, I had to trade up to the 32GB version of the 3GS as the 16GB were out of stock at the local AT&T).

So what went wrong for a product that, if you recall, had pretty impressive hype just a few months back? Below are my two cents.

  • Poor marketing execution. This is obviously the easiest target of all, since everyone has been talking about these ads that makes no sense (see Fake Steve Jobs’ ranting analysis here). Like Fake Steve says, these ads show that Palm and Sprint seem to be confused about who their target consumer is (female smartphone users? That’s a tiny market), and the execution itself is creepily effective at driving negative PR.
  • Lost PR momentum. Somewhat related to the previous point. The Pre was announced at the CES 2009 in January, and was definitely the hit product of the show. (I remember at the time being very hyped about the phone, and wanting to buy one immediately. The phone and its UI just looked very sexy.) However, as time passed, people’s interest gradually waned – the smartphone industry is extremely competitive with lots of players vying for consumer eyeballs, and Palm is not Apple, with a loyal base of media support (e.g. TUAW). With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it would have been better if Palm kept Pre under wraps until very close to the launch date (of course there will be info leaks, but that would just help fuel the PR). And certainly it didn’t help that Apple announcing the iPhone 3GS two days after Pre launched in the US.
  • iPhone’s first mover advantage. Namely, installed user-base and scaled up App Store. This is actually a huge advantage for Apple, and appears to indicate a winner-takes-all end-game – the more users, the more developers, and therefore more quality apps, which in turn attracts more users. The primary and only reason that I again bought an iPhone upon arriving in the States (and bearing with AT&T) is the App Store. This is the equivalent of the Windows eco-system on PCs. Competing OSes just lack the richness of the applications available, and for a computing device, it is all about the apps.
  • But most fundamentally, unclear target consumer and value proposition. The Pre’s most innovative feature is the webOS, which supports concurrent applications – a key feature that the iPhone has not yet opened to 3rd party developers. However, the only people who would seriously care about this feature are smartphone power users – i.e. the millions of iPhone users – who can appreciate its benefits. But to convince iPhone users to switch, the Pre is lacking one major dimension: the App Store. There is no point in being able to run multiple apps if there are no apps. So in effect, the Pre’s most talked-about feature was a no-feature.

So what are the things that Palm could do to alleviate the situation?

  • Build up the developer eco-system. It’s cliched, but it has to be done. Palm needs to have quality apps on its phones. This is an uphill battle, but one which must be fought nonetheless. One thing that Palm can do to attract developers is to have an open platform for developers to publish their work (as opposed to Apple’s draconian control on apps).
  • Re-think its marketing strategy. And not just in terms of marketing communication – the entire marketing strategy, i.e. which geographic markets and which consumer segments. We should remember that the US is not the only mobile market in the world (Nokia, which has almost no share in the US market, is still the global leader in every mobile category, including smartphones). It’s probably an wild idea, but if Palm can focus on certain markets where the iPhone has not had such an impact, it could build up some user-base scale. (Again, while Nokia is heavily entrenched in most global markets, their smartphone eco-system – or the lack thereof – leaves plenty of space for newcomers to attack. In such markets as China, it’s more about the hardware and the UI, rather than the apps, and the Pre would probably fare better?)

It’s certainly not going to be a smooth revival at Palm. But they do have a quality product, they just need to realize who to sell it to.