BPN 1361 eReader war coming up in the USA

So far Amazon.com was dominating the US eReader and eBook market, overruling Sony who was the first player on the US market. But now it gets competition from Barnes & Noble. And in the wings Hearst is still waiting. Only Sony is present in the European market.

The book chain Barnes & Nobles (B&N) returns to eBooks. From 2001 till 2003 it was offering eBooks, but it stopped trading them due to a lack lustre market. The book chain will now return with a vengeance. The eBook shop will serve the whole eBook market. It has a portfolio with 700.000 eBooks, of which half a million public domain titles. However it promises 1,25 million eBooks titles by next year. It will keep the books down to 9,99 US dollar. B&N will serve the whole spectre of eBook readers. Barnes and Nobles will have its own exclusive ultra thin 8.5 x 11 inch wireless eReader, to be produced by Plastic Logic, exclusively for B&N. The book chain will also exclusively deliver books to Plastic Logic. And it has already eReader software for the iPhone, iPOD, Blackberry’s and smart phones. Also PCs and Mac computers can download the B&N books. The books will be delivered in the ePUB format, setting it aside of Amazon and Sony; the books can not be printed. The eBook portfolio includes DRM-free books from Fictionwise’s catalogue. Designed with the book reader in mind, B&N eReader client software provides an easy-to- use interface to access the B&N Bookstore and to manage their personal eBook libraries. It features powerful tools to optimize the reading experience, including the ability to modify type size and font and annotate and bookmark text, as well as an innovative auto-scroll feature enabling users hands free reading. In addition, users can shift from reading their eBook from a smartphone while commuting to a notebook PC or eReader device at bedtime.

The B&N re-entry will be a shock to Amazon. The company has been a long reseller of eBooks. Since 2007 it has launched the Kindle and sold 500.000 units of the Kindle eReader. This eReader has now three versions, which can hold 1.500 eBooks. Amazon has 275,000 titles are available in the Kindle format. Recently, Amazon’s CEO Bezos claimed that for every three print copies it also sells one Kindle e-book. The total sales of Amazon of eBooks, eReaders and devices will reach 1.2 billion US dollar by 2010.

The re-entry of B&N is not a surprise. In March 2009 B&N acquired eBook seller Fictionwise for $15.7 million in cash. Fictionwise, which runs a trio of sites, Fictionwise, eReader and eBookwise, operates as a standalone business unit under founders Scott and Steve Pendergrast. First-time users of the eReader will have the opportunity to download free eBooks, including titles such as Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, Sense and Sensibility, Little Women, Last of the Mohicans, Pride and Prejudice, and Dracula.

The re-entry of B&N will have an impact on the US eBook scene. B&N is a big print book player in the US and the UK and its contact with publishers is more symbiotic than that of Amazon and Sony. B&N promises a larger portfolio of eBooks than Amazon en Sony; despite the half a million public domain titles from Google, it will have 750.000 titles by next year. And as B&N will officially start its bookshop in September of this year, it will be ahead of the publisher Hearst, which is supposed to launch a large display eReader in the fall. There will be a real competition in the US market by the Christmas season.

So far B&N has announced to limit its eBook market to the US, leaving Europe aside like Amazon and most likely Hearst. So far only Sony is active in the UK and some larger European countries. A host of eReaders from several European countries are trying to gain local market. A fight is said to be brewing in Germany between Vodafone and T-Telecom as well as txtr. Also in France some eReader designers are fighting for a piece of the market. In the Netherlands BeBook is fighting Irex eReaders.

Blog Posting Number: 1361

Tags: eReader, eBook

BPN 1357 Germany heats up for eReader battle

The German magazine Wirtschafts Woche brings the item that Vodafone is developing an eBook reader. The article does not have any hard facts about the developer and the type of eBook reader, except that it is a large screen (DIN-A4) for newspapers. Vodafone is presently in the test phase.

To some bloggers the news came as a surprise, but Vodafone has been involved in eReader experiments in Germany as far back as 2004. The project was named Papyrus and involved a project on electronic newspapers and DVB-H. News items were transmitted with DVB-H, the standard for mobile interactive broadcast. In 2004 the first trial was held in Berlin with 200 users. But Vodafone researched also other carriers for DVB-H as carrier for electronic newspapers like an eReader.

Vodafone did not choose for the e-readers like iLiad and STAReBOOK as Les Echos did. It started working together with Benq, a joint venture of Siemens, in developing the electronic tabloid newspaper. But Benq sunk in 2006 and so did that part of the project. In 2007 the consortium, in which Bertelsmann participated, then investigated other digital paper producers like Plastic Logic (which still has not been launched in 2009). More details on the project Papyrus can be gained from a lecture by Mr Geissler in 2007). In 2008 Vodafone Group R&D commissioned the Linz lab-atelier to come up with an interaction concept for their eInk-Newspaper Project Papyrus and demonstrated it at the Ars Electronica.

So the question is now whether Vodafone is still with Siemens or Plastic Logic. But of course Vodafone can also cooperate with developers who have a small display at present. Like Samsung, which has an A5 eReader named Papyrus. Or like the small German developer txtr which will launch an eReader of eInk Vizplex 6" display at 600x800 pixels in the fall of 2009 for the general consumer market. Of course of interest would be to know who will deliver the newspapers and books. Given the early project association with Bertelsmann, it would be striaght forward to make an alliance with that publisher.

It is interesting to see that there is a battle developing in Germany. T-Mobile has indicated last year that it is developing an eReader for newspapers. Now Vodafone is said to launch an eReader in the fall right at the time, when the small German developer will present its eReader with a 6” display.

Even more interesting it is to see that this fight heats up at a time when Amazon leaves a gap in the European ereader market with the absence of a European version of Kindle. Amazon has difficulkties to get in the European market and especially European telecom market as it will have to negotiate in all 27 countries with telecom companies. The European telecom market is one big fragmented industry. With T-Telecom picking up the iPhone and Android gadgets, it would be logical that Amazon woulkd negotiate with T-Telecom. But then the question still is whether T-Telecom is willing to pay the price Amazon asks.

Blog Posting Number: 1357

Tags: eBook, eReader, DVB-H

BPN 1118 KPN goes mobile TV

On the even of the European football championship, the Dutch incumbent telco KPN launches its MobielTV service. KPN will use the DVB-H technology and will be competing with Vodafone, which uses UMTS and HSDPA.

MobielTV will offer 11 broadcast stations: Nederland 1, Nederland 3, RTL 4, SBS 6, Jetix/Veronica, RTL Z, MTV Music, Nick Toons, Xite, Discovery Channel en Playboy TV, while more stations will be added in the future. The service will be offered on Nokia and Samsung devices. The service will cost 9,50 euro separately; when bundled with a new subscription above 27,50 euro, the service will be free. The service will have coverage of 85 per cent in The Netherlands, while 65 per cent in the car and in the train.

KPN will be the only DVB-H information provider in the Netherlands in collaboration with its technology partner Samsung. KPN has the sole right to the DVB-T/H frequencies until 2017. KPN will be in the company of other European telcos, offering TV services. Italy was first in launching with Operator La 3 of H3G, part of Hutchinson Whampoa, and has 600.000 DVB-H users. In the meantime competition has started in Italy with Telecom Italia Movile (TIM) and Vodafone; in Italy UMTS is used as back-up service. DVB-H services are also operational in Germany (Mobile 3.0), Switzerland (Swisscom), Austria (TDF/Mediabroadcast) and Albania (DigitAlb).

KPN is negotiating with Vodafone and T-Mobile to offer the service MobielTV through their networks. Vodafone took the occasion to send out a press release, saying that Vodafone had already a mobile TV service with 14 stations and a subscription for 7,50 euro a month. It also notes that with DVB-H you can only watch live TV, while with mobile internet people can watch TV in their own time.

KPN can make use of the DVB-H technology as it runs the Digitenne television service in the Netherlands. This television distribution service is part of the offer by KPN, while KPN has also interactive TV via a broadband connection. In total KPN has 553.000 TV subscribers over against 296.000 subscribers last year.

It is a kind of sarcastic. But in 1997 KPN was ordered by the Telecom watchdog OPTA to get rid of its cable network company Vision; now the company competes with the cable companies on triple play. MobielTV is an advantage to KPN.

Blog Posting Number: 1118

Tags: mobile TV, digital TV, DVB-H

BPN 1008 The flood of press releases on mobile stops today

Today the boys and girls of the mobile industry pack up and will leave Barcelona. They have a lot to think of. They got quite some messages for the next year to think about. I am not in the mobile business nor am I in Barcelona. I am just a mobile user with an interest in the development of mobile content. So I have been reading the stream of press releases. Most of them could be relegated to the dustbin immediately and were not even worth reading. And as I wrote before about the Readius, the mobile with flexible digital paper, of course the old tricks were played to lure the press; but the press can have a better memory these days due to search engines. (I recently spoke to someone who had seen and felt the Readius and was shocked to find out that you have to open the mobile when called. There is no interface and/or screen on the outside of the mobile to accept the call. This mobile will not win a usability award, was his final judgement).

The flood of press releases shows that the mobile industry will have to deal with saturation. This year there will be more mobiles in China than in the USA. Of course there are still markets which still have to pick up mobile telecom, but they are not the most interesting markets. And the profit margins on devices are under pressure; Nokia has to move its production from Germany to Romania.

After saturation, consolidation sets in. No longer the various models of mobile telephone (or handy as the Germans call the device) are important but the software will influence the acquisition. And the software is based on the operating system. Presently there are some 50 operating systems and new ones still pop up like Google's Android. But the most important ones for now dominate the market: Symbian, Microsoft Mobile, Opera. And the manufacturers are no longer strict in using operating systems. Even Symbian shareholder Sony-Ericsson has now used Microsoft Mobile in one of its new models. And they are desperately looking for infrastructure like search engines. Of course Microsoft hoped to catch two flies in one go with Yahoo. Once the search engine would be part of the conglomerate, it could also function as mobile search engine.

But the main manufacturers and operators are still dancing around the issue of content. The latest item in content is of course television. This will bring in the ship with gold; so they think. I am not a believer of that. Mobile television will fit in the snack culture: short, funny movies. I do not believe that you will watch television series. In my view this will be something for the Ultra Mobile PCs, which will flood the market by mid 2008.

But also in other content areas, manufactures are looking again. Nokia started to distribute content of games, music, navigation information and other information through its Ovi service. Local operators will be glad to pick up the connect minutes, but will not get any extra’s out of it. The operators have also looked for the content revenue extension. But the time of the walled garden services is over. Besides people pick what they want to have and not what the operators think that they should have.

One of the reasons mobile content has not been a success is the tariff of connect time. Just downloading a1Mb from the mobile net cost a fortune. Of course T-Telecom has brought down the price, but if you have to pay yourself, you will not connect to YouTube for the daily selection. And money is not the only handicap, but also the operating systems. The scaling/reformatting of internet screens does not really work, even not on smart phone screens.

There is an old wisdom in the PC world that you have to sell a PC for free and ask money for software. IBM forgot to do this, when it launched the PC in 1981 and Microsoft came in. In 2004 IBM had to sell its PC business to Lenovo. Nokia is trying to hold the fortress by launching the Ovi service. But will this service mature in time to deliver profits, when the profits on device manufacturing will start to tumble and local operators are back to their old game of ticks and bundles.

Blog Posting Number 1008

Tags: mobile, walled garden, smart phone, digital paper