Pretending to Know Consumer Electronics When You Don’t
When the Nook hit the media, I was said wow. Whoever the old stodgy book retailer put in charge of this product really knew their stuff. Where did this guy come from? The dual display was nice but running Android was the dead give away that a geek was in the building. It turns out B&Ns product development wasn’t as inspired as it first appeared. They allegedly ‘misappropriated’ the idea and the design. In their rush to market it is not that surprising.
So here is the thing about all this — Amazon is not a consumer electronics company and they under-compensated with the Kindle. The device and the rollout has been amateur hour. Barnes and Noble is also not a consumer electronics company. They overcompensated and now have egg on their face. So the obvious lesson if you are a Borders, an Indigo, or a Conde Naste is a branded ereader is really hard to hit out of the park. DON’T BE SEDUCED by the high margins. Don’t rush it. And don’t be fooled that a single-use device is the ticket to iTunes/iPod like market dominance.
The perfect device is four or five iterations into the future. Unless you go hire the right engineers with a road map like that in mind, then put down the ereader in your hand and walk away. It is distracting you from broadening your digital content offering and acquiring customers.
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