Indigo Should Aim to Be The Number One Reseller Of The iPad — Even At A Loss
The iPad was announced today and with it came a ton of questions about the iBookStore — terms, pricing, DRM, not to mention the raft of questions about the ereading app. I am sure all will be answered in time but the available information makes it pretty clear what Indigo needs to do — use the iPad as a hammer to beat down interest in Amazon’s Kindle in Canada.
Before Amazon bought Audible, Audible had a partnership with Indigo whereby the two companies subsidized every iPod sold from Chapters.Indigo.ca. Indigo moved a ton of units and Audible signed up new members. Indigo was the cheapest and easiest place for the majority of Canadians to get an iPod. They did good business. In the same way, Indigo and Kobo need to tag team on a subsidy for the iPad. If they lowered the price of the 16gig model by $50 bucks they would become the place to buy the iPad in Canada. If everyone that bought an iPad from Indigo got a Kobo account with some free books then they could grow market share and pressure Amazon to adopt ePub.
In this context, ePub is like number portability in the cellphone world. It levels the playing field by taking selection out of the equation. It makes price and service the remaining competitive issues. In the long run that would be good for Kobo.
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