{"id":1364,"date":"2010-11-28T12:31:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-28T16:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2013-08-03T16:59:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-03T20:59:23","slug":"the-true-year-of-the-e-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/28\/the-true-year-of-the-e-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"The True Year of the E-Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi folks, AOFM pinch-hitting for the crazy duck lady. She's busy on the laptop looking for Black Friday-Saturday-Sunday deals. Me? I just wait until Christmas Eve and buy jewelry. Or at least I used to when we had disposable income. Now I buy cheap plastic trinkets from China<\/a>\u00a0and hand those out with drunken ass-whippings, like all good daddies do.<\/p>\n

It's not all bad this year, though. We were told the first Christmas after Oprah showed off the Kindle\u00a0that it was THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R. That was 2009 or so. At \"under\" $400 (did you ever notice that when retailers say something is \"under\" a certain price, that's the actual price?), it was AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE!<\/p>\n

Until we get to $400 for a gallon of gas, (which is an entirely separate blog post) something at that price is not really<\/em> available to everyone. Something has to pretty much be a household necessity to be priced at $400 or\u00a0more, especially after the economic downturn of early 2009. And an e-reader is not<\/em> a household necessity (unless you happen to be married to an insane duck lady with sharp metal implements within her easy reach).<\/p>\n

So when Amazon et al<\/em> tried to talk up 2009\u00a0as THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R, they were full of it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This year is different, though. 2010 is shaping up to be the promised year. Why? Because the e-reader manufacturers are realizing what the video game manufacturers realized over 10 years ago - the devices are nothing without content, and content is where the steady money is.<\/p>\n

Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft tried selling their video game platforms for a profit to recoup R&D, but the consumer response was weak because the prices were just too damn high<\/a>.\u00a0The big sales came after the early tech adopters (a.k.a. people with more money than brains<\/a>) financed the production of more units at a lower cost, beat the bugs out,\u00a0and provided secondhand advertising for the platform. Then the companies lowered their device prices to near cost and got content providers on board. At that point, the consoles were TRULY available to everyone. But the video game companies weren't making as much money on their devices<\/em> as they were on content<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today, e-reader companies find themselves in the same situation, and they've taken a page out of the video game platform playbook. Once again, the tables are turning in favor of Amazon, which has control over their devices and<\/em> content.<\/p>\n

As long as they continue to learn from the early mistakes of Apple<\/a> and Sony<\/a>, they'll keep the upper hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi folks, AOFM pinch-hitting for the crazy duck lady. She's busy on the laptop looking for Black Friday-Saturday-Sunday deals. Me? I just wait until Christmas Eve and buy jewelry. Or at least I used to when we had disposable income. Now I buy cheap plastic trinkets from China\u00a0and hand those out with drunken ass-whippings, like ...continue reading \"The True Year of the E-Reader\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2981,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2981"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3577,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions\/3577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}