06/02/09

Amazon: Battle lines being drawn?

Lots of anticipation for the Amazon announcement in NY next week. Will it be Kindle 2.0, a slightly underwhelming device with different buttons and a faster graphics card? Will it be the long-awaited announcement of Kindle UK? Or the announcement of an iPhone app that supports Kindle? This last is (for me) potentially the most interesting:

Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones.

“We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones,” said Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon. “We are working on that now.”

as (if true) it can’t fail to show that Amazon has lost the ebook device race to the iPhone. But if they concede that race (one in which they are maybe outnumbered up to 60 times), can they perhaps win the bigger eBook distribution (and format) race? No-one watching the space can fail to have seen the traction of the iPhone as reading device in recent months. collectively, the iPhone and Amazon’s distribution network would be a formidable entrant (and AMazon has dipped a toe in iPhone apps already).

One thing we know is that Amazon is aggressive as hell and is very keen to both kick-start and own as big a chunk of the eBook market as possible. Whether that is manifested through the hardware or the content is probably moot, although it would no doubt hurt if their first piece of consumer hardware “failed” compared to the iPhone.

Certainly there is confusion over the reasons for the delay in the launch of Kindle UK. Originally cited as due to the complex mobile telephony infrastructure:

The delay is partly because the Kindle uses a free wireless service called whispernet, which enables users to download books, and signing up networks around Europe is a complex operation.

Mr McBride told The Bookseller: “If you need agreement with carriers in the US, there is one carrier. In Europe it is a minefield, as there are so many operators. If you buy a Kindle in the UK and want to read it on the beach on holiday, unless we have signed deals in Spain it is not going to work on the beach.”

rumours abound that the delay has actually been publishers, reluctant to set a price-driven precedent in a new market, are unwilling to accept the challenging terms that Amazon is no doubt demanding for Kindle sales. If this is true, it could get very interesting; Amazon is not afraid to play tough when it comes to terms negotiations, their position usually protected by their blanket smokescreen of “giving customers what they want”.

Still, assuming this to be the case, it would appear to have been running since October, when the delay was announced. It’s hard to imagine Amazon will wait for ever before finding other routes to market, and whether British publishers are prepared to enter into a larger, or even collective stand-off with Amazon on eBooks, and how such a stand-off would affect existing relationships, remains to be seen.

We don’t know what Amazon will announce on Monday. Hopefully it will be great news that grows the market for ebooks and reading in general, focused around Kindle, rather than anything which further squeezes the already beleaguered UK publishing industry, which has undergone a perfect storm of events in recent months.

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Publishing.

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