Is The Ebook Reader Market A Two Horse Race?

The market for both ebook readers and the ebooks that go with them is still relatively new. It can be easy to forget that at times – both readers and ebooks have been adopted relatively quickly by the public.

Amazon’s Kindle reader is a perfect example. It is the clear leader in the ebook reader market, a position which it has held for some time now. It is also the top selling product on the Amazon website. Pretty impressive for a product which launched less than 4 years ago.

It’s also worth remembering that the Kindle was not the first reader on the market. Sony’s PRS reader was released in 2006, well ahead of the Kindle. However, pretty much from the moment it launched, the Kindle has dominated, and even shaped to a certain extent, the ebook reader market.

One of the big factors in the success of the Kindle reader, has been the large selection of Kindle books available for it. The Kindle reader and Kindle books combine to form a very effective tag team. Customers are happy to buy Kindle readers, secure in the knowledge that there is a good selection of books available and – agency model pricing by publishing houses permitting – that they will get their Kindle books for a good price. And of course, sales of Kindle readers drive Kindle book sales higher.

It’s a virtuous circle for Amazon – and it’s one which makes it difficult for pure electronics manufacturers to establish a presence in the market or to gain market share.

To a lesser, but still very significant, extent, the same phenomenon can be seen with Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader. At a time when B&N’s bricks and mortar retail outlets have seen a general downward trend in sales, their digital sales – the Nook reader and the books that go with it – have soared.

Whilst it may be true to say that the Nook has been trailing a rather distant second to the Kindle for some time now, it is still an extremely important product for B&N. The fact that the Kindle and the Nook are the two top selling ebook readers also seems to imply that people have a preference for buying their readers from companies which have, not only a good selection of ebooks available for them to choose from, but who also have strong links with both books and reading.

Barnes and Noble has recently updated the Nook reader. The new Nook touch has a number of improvements and looks like it could very well be capable of closing the gap on the Kindle. The Kindle/Nook battle should, at the very least, be a much more equal struggle in future.

The big deal with the Nook is its touch screen controls. Avoiding the need for a QWERTY keypad has allowed Barnes and Noble to make the new Nook small and light – see below for a comparison with the Kindle. Battery life is good and the e-ink display has less flashing during page turns than most current readers. It also has a scanning/scrolling facility and a number of other improvements.

Kindle vs Nook At A Glance

Of course, the technical comparison is only one side of the story. You need to consider the availability of books and how much they will cost for your chosen reader. However, with both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, you can probably assume that there will plenty of books available for you to choose from. Don’t assume that prices will be the same for ebooks though – the exact same book can be priced differently on different readers. It’s well worth checking prices before you decide which reader to go with.

Whichever you prefer, the Kindle or the Nook, is really up to you. Each to his/her own as they say. It does seem fair to say that the Kindle/Nook contest is going to be a lot more closely contested in the near future.

And, of course, the appearance of the iRiver Story HD on the market, the first reader to be fully integrated with the Google eBookstore, could change things quite a bit. A three way market split would be more in keeping with what many business analysts have long been predicting for the ebook market.

The only trouble is that it is supposed, according to industry watchers, to be a three way split between Amazon, Google and Apple. Whilst the new Nook may not be a Kindle killer (not quite), on the face of it, Barnes and Noble appear to have the reader, the books and the infrastructure to crash that party.

Back to ebook reader home – or have a look at Kindle 4   Kindle Touch   Kindle Fire