In last week's Wall Street Journal, there's a story about it. Here's the relevant bit:
"From a hardware perspective, it's wonderful," Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with JupiterResearch in New York, says of the Reader. "It's a question of whether the content restrictions are going to be so onerous and so difficult to use that consumers simply won't bother."
What is it with the executives who run Sony, and other companies with a similar mindset? Have they never heard of Apple's iPod and iTunes? Make it easy to get content (iTunes for $0.99) and people will buy the device. LOTS of people. Be overly restrictive about what you can download, and how long you can view it, and you might as well start looking for warehouse facilities for all the un-sold The Readers that you're going to have.
Come on, guys. This ain't rocket science. You've got a really cool product. Now make it easy to for the customer to get content, and you've got a guaranteed winner.
From first hand experience, E Ink lives up to the hype.
Just hope that Sony don't ruin their second "real" attempt at going for the eBook market - because too strong content restrictions will doom this.
Fair enough for their own iStore (Sony Connect) - but they'll be shooting themselves in the foot if they restrict smaller publishers and independents from selling their eBooks.
Posted by: Martin | February 20, 2006 5:16 PM | Permalink to Comment