Il rombo della battaglia

Macmillan E-books – kindle Discussion Forum: “Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the ‘big six’ publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.”

“Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles”.

Sembra una frase quasi stupida: ovviamente, una casa editrice ha il monopolio dei libri che pubblica. Quindi uno si chiede perché quelli di Amazon dovrebbero usare una frase così ingenua.

Secondo me vuol dire: “Ma alla fine fine a che servono gli editori? Prima o poi questo monopolio e ruolo di intermediazione cesserà e gli autori parleranno direttamente con noi.”

Ne vedremo delle belle.

Tagged with:
 

Questo conferma quanto da più parti si ripete: il punto non è solo far leggere qualcosa in elettronico. L’utente vuole anche cambiare ed estendere l’esperienza d’uso. Altrimenti, tanto vale tenersi la carta.

Study finds people want more from their Kindles, less from their newspapers — Engadget: “This may come as a surprise to you (although probably not, you smart devil), but it turns out that plenty of people are dissatisfied with their current e-reader options — according to a recent study conducted at the University of Georgia. The study was conducted over a six-month period where participants read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on a Kindle, then provided feedback. The results were, well — not entirely shocking. Younger adults found the Kindle to be lacking because it had no touchscreen or other applications (though to be fair, neither does the print version of the paper), while older adults seemed more satisfied, but also reported missing the crossword puzzles and comics of a real, live newspaper. Pretty much everyone agreed that the screen was nice and comfortable to read on, but almost no one was a fan of the price. All in all, there’s not terribly much here that we think is overly telling — besides (of course) the fact that paper rules.”

Tagged with:
 

Telefonica’s Alierta May Turn to Telecom Italia for Growth

Non seguo le vicende societarie di Telecom Italia con l’attenzione e l’approfondimento del Quinta. Devo dire però che leggendo queste notizie, l’uso della parola telenovela mi pare un understatement.

Telefonica’s Alierta May Turn to Telecom Italia for Growth – BusinessWeek: “Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Telefonica SA Chairman Cesar Alierta may seek to take over Telecom Italia SpA to drive growth at Europe’s second-largest phone company. The Spaniard may have a willing partner in Marco Fossati.
‘A true, full merger between the two companies would have immense industrial value and generate significant synergies,’ Fossati, whose family holding company Findim Group SA owns about 5 percent of Telecom Italia and is its second-biggest shareholder, said in an interview. ‘I believe so much in the integration that I would be willing to take Telefonica shares in a deal.’”

Tagged with:
 

Apple in Talks With Publishers in Advance of Tablet’s Debut – WSJ.com: “Book publishers were locked in 11th-hour negotiations with Apple Inc. that could rewrite the industry’s revenue model after the technology giant unveils its highly anticipated tablet device Wednesday.

Apple’s new multimedia tablet device, with a 10-inch touch screen that is expected to deliver video, text, navigation and social-networking applications, is trying to change the way much of traditional media is delivered.

For the book industry, the Apple tablet is bringing to a head a brewing battle between Apple and industry heavyweight Amazon.com Inc. over how e-books—seen as the future of the book industry—will be priced and distributed.

Apple’s business model for books, which the company has kept under tight wraps, shifts the focus away from the bargain-basement prices Amazon has made popular, according to publishers that have met directly with the company. Apple is asking publishers to set two e-book price points for hardcover best sellers: $12.99 and $14.99, with fewer titles offered at $9.99. In setting their own e-book prices, publishers would avoid the threat of heavy discounting. Apple would take a 30% cut of the book price, with publishers receiving the remaining 70%.

Apple’s vision is at odds with Amazon.com, which has shaken the book industry by slashing prices of e-books on its Kindle reader and making the $9.99 e-book bestseller a fixture.

The Apple tablet aims to reshape many corners of the media industry, just as Apple’s iPod revolutionized the music business when it made its debut in 2001. Apple has been in discussions with television networks, magazines and videogame publishers about featuring their wares on the device. On the eve of the launch, it wasn’t clear to some people briefed on the matter whether Apple had made a final decision about wireless connectivity or the carriers involved.”

 

The Maturation of Social Media ROI

The Maturation of Social Media ROI: “Where the ‘I’ in ROI represents investment, marketers have also explored ancillary elements to address the socialization of media, marketing, and the resulting dynamics of engagement.

Adaptations included:

Return on Engagement: The duration of time spent either in conversation or interacting with social objects, and in turn, what transpired that’s worthy of measurement.

Return on Participation: The metric tied to measuring and valuing the time spent participating in social media through conversations or the creation of social objects.

Return on Involvement: Similar to participation, marketers explored touchpoints for documenting states of interaction and tied metrics and potential return of each.

Return on Attention: In the attention economy, we assess the means to seize attention, hold it, and measure the response.

Return on Trust: A variant on measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, a trust barometer establishes the state of trust earned in social media engagement and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts future business.”

 

Due punti critici

ASUS is suddenly all chatty with its plans to enter the e-reader market in 2010. Just yesterday we got word of a 6-inch color (claimed to be OLED by InGear) e-reader from ASUS by the name of DR-570 headed to retail before the year is through. Now we've got details of a second ASUS e-reader, dubbed the DR-950 that should arrive sooner. This time we're looking at a 9-inch Sipix panel with 1,024 x 768 pixel resolution pushing 16-levels of gray just like the Jinke reader unveiled at CES. The touchscreen DR-950 measures features text-to-speech (based on Svox engine supporting 26 languages), a web browser that works in portrait or landscape modes, a virtual keyboard and handwriting input, a RSS reader, and dictionary (with expandable database) with real-time translation. Spec-wise, the 222 x 161 x 9-mm / 370-gram reader packs WiFi and HSPA (WiMax is optional) data radios, 3.5-mm headphone jack and stereo speakers, with 4GB of internal memory and SD Card expansion. Supported formats include PDF, TXT, Audible, MP3, and unprotected ePub. Not bad ASUS, not bad. Now let's see some content partners, eh? See it pictured browsing the web after the break.

via ASUS DR-950 9-inch touchscreen e-reader brings text-to-speech and internet browser — Engadget.

Ormai gli annunci di ereader si susseguono a ritmo incalzante. Più leggo queste notizie e più mi si rafforzano due dubbi di fondo:

  1. Ma i contenuti ci sono? Gli editori rendono disponibili libri e riviste che possano essere letti su questi ereader? Per Kindle ci sono, anche se i libri sono solo in inglese e di giornali italiani ce ne sono pochi. Ma tutti gli altri?
  2. Tutti questi oggetti hanno tecnologie compatibili o no? Posso leggere un qualunque contenuto comunque sia stato formattato? Basta che siano PDF? E, soprattutto, posso installare applicazioni? Quali sono gli ambienti di sviluppo? Sono compatibili?
Chissà che la prima vera risposta convincente (oltre all’approccio Kindle/Amazon) non arrivi a fine gennaio …
Tagged with:
 

A proposito di green …

Ho ordinato il Kindle DX. Insieme ho ordinato anche la custodia. Amazon dovrebbe iniziare a spedire il Kindle a partire dal 19/1.

Qualche giorno fa ricevo la custodia. Secondo loro prassi, spediscono un ordine a pezzi in funzione della disponibilità. Capisco possa essere utile per CD o libri. Ma a che mi serve la custodia senza Kindle? Non potevano spedire tutto insieme e risparmiavano imballo, trasporto …

Mah

Tagged with:
 

Apple-to-apples

Nexus One sells only 20,000 phones its first week: “Another ‘iPhone killer’ has failed to deliver on its hype. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, Google’s Nexus One phone sold a mere 20,000 units in its first week in the market.

The Flurry report goes on to compare the Nexus One launch with other smartphones, including the Motorola Droid, which sold 250,000 units in its first week. In its comparison to the iPhone 3GS launch, however, the report is a bit disingenuous. The iPhone 3GS was an update to an existing & wildly popular product, not a completely new product launch. In that light, the 1.6 million iPhones sold in the first week of the 3GS launch, while indeed 80 times the number of Nexus One sales, aren’t a true apples-to-Apple comparison.

Instead, a better comparison may be to sales of the original iPhone. According to Apple’s Q3 2007 results, released on 25 July 2007, the iPhone sold 270,000 units during the quarter. The original iPhone was released nearly a month earlier, on June 29. That works out to around 10,000 original iPhones sold per day following its 2007 release, which dovetails nicely with an early 2008 analysis of iPhone sales from Ars Technica. Far from the flabbergasting sales lead of the 3GS, the original iPhone sold about 3.5 times as many units in its 2007 launch as Nexus One did in 2010; also, the original iPhone sold for a hefty $599, even with an AT&T contract, while the Nexus One is $179 with a new T-Mobile contract ($529 without).

If anything, these numbers highlight the popularity of the Droid compared to the Nexus One. Droid sold nearly as many phones in its first week as the original iPhone sold in its first month, which is nothing to sneer at. By comparison to the Droid, however, the Nexus One launched with a whimper, not a bang.”

Vodafone sells 50,000 iPhones in UK on first day of sale | Phones | iPhone Central | Macworld: “Vodafone, the fourth mobile phone operator in the UK to stock the iPhone after O2, Orange, and Tesco Mobile (in partnership with O2), shipped 50,000 Apple smartphones to customers Thursday who pre-registered with the company.

Vodafone UK chief executive Guy Laurence citied ‘exceptional demand’ for the iPhone despite pricing deals being similar to those offered by O2 and Orange. Details of Vodafone tariffs can be found here.

They has been some suggestion that Vodafone has struggled to meet that demand, with customers reporting delays in receiving iPhones.”

Tagged with:
 

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Qualche info



View Alfonso Fuggetta's profile on LinkedIn