Today Amazon is Top Cat in the ebook world, holding a commanding position in both content and hardware sales. Whatever challengers it once had have either died, given up the fight, or are on the decline. Their future opposition is unsettled, with a trio of would-be challengers hanging around but not making any verifiable dent in Kindle’s world. Yet.
It was not always so. Back in the earliest days of the Kindle, it was Amazon that was the challenger, the scrappy underdog. In the days before Kindle, Sony was king. But Sony’s reign was short and that it ended quickly was purely Sony’s doing. One, perhaps well-intentioned, decision that ultimately doomed them.
The Sony Pivot
When it comes to eink readers Sony is an unquestioned pioneer. They are usually credited with the first commercial eink reader (though Hanlin begs to differ) and they put it at the center of a tightly integrated ebook ecosystem. The promise of the Sony Librie promise was great, mostly because of its then-new display tech:
MobileMag in March 2004 reported:
“While the way people experience entertainment has changed dramatically with the rapid growth of portable entertainment devices like music and movie players, the way people read books, magazines and newspapers has not,” said Jim Veninger, general manager, Emerging Display Technology, Philips Electronics. “The precision of this new high-resolution electronic ink display technology will revolutionize the way consumers read and access textual information.”
The Librie started out as a Japan-only product with modest aspirations of 5000 readers per month. The Associated Press review noted:
“Reading Librie isn’t anything like flipping through a paperback, but it is a breeze. You just push a button on the side of the display to go to the next page, and the button above that to go back.
Skipping around a book is easy. A cursor button featuring a picture of a dog is scrolled at the bottom of the display. The Librie has a memory function that can place up to 40 bookmarks.
But you can’t copy and paste passages to another computer or device. And copy protection built into the software garbles your books into useless data after two months. There’s no way to digitally archive texts for later reference.”
It turned out the Gemstar lockdown wasn’t the worst way to cripple an ebook ecosystem after all. Trust corporate publishers to come up with ever worse requirements.
“To download content, the machine connects to a personal computer via a USB link. The digital books are obtained from a service in Japan called Publishing Link that was set up with capital from Sony and major Japanese publishers. The service currently targets businessmen with a collection of 800 books whose topics range from business and sports to health and travel, mysteries and best-sellers.
The Librie ships with 10 megabytes of onboard memory, which translates to about 20 books numbering 250 pages each. It accommodates flash memory in the Sony Memory Stick format for additional storage, more than enough for anyone who likes to lug along a library on long trips.
I’m not wild about buying books that self-destruct after 60 days. But the idea behind Librie makes impeccable sense.”
Indeed, and Sony learned that lesson quickly. The Librie never made it west (officially) but its followup, the PRS-500, shipped in September 2006 and the game was finally afoot.
CNET Was generally positive:
The Good Slim and relatively lightweight; screen requires no backlight and is easy to read in bright environments; with the addition of optional memory card (SD or Memory Stick Pro), it’s capable of storing thousands of electronic books; font size can be adjusted with a single button push; decent battery life; displays PDF and Word files, most image files, and plays MP3 and AAC audio.
The Bad Overall, the unit feels a tad sluggish, with a short but noticeable delay when turning a page; controls aren’t as intuitive as they could be; interface could be slightly easier to use; Sony’s online Connect bookstore is still a work in progress; proprietary Connect book files aren’t compatible with other devices and are often as expensive as paper books; Connect software isn’t available for Mac owners; no support for Audible audio books.
The Bottom Line Though the Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader System is an impressive platform for reading e-books and other documents, the price and availability of compatible “books” makes it a tougher sell.
Limited book supply, high prices… everybody faced that. The publishers were not…helpful.
…to get the stuff you’d buy today in Barnes and Noble, you have to tap into Sony’s Connect eBooks online store. You download the software to your computer, set up an account, and download whatever titles (they’re copy-protected) strike your fancy–for a price, of course. We won’t go into a full critique of the Connect service–you can follow the previous link to check it out yourself–but suffice to say that while the selection isn’t anywhere near Amazon’s, it isn’t bad for a fledgling service. The books aren’t exactly a bargain, with the prices for many books basically the same as their printed versions (in some cases, you might even find the printed version for less online). According to a Sony rep, “DRM rules allow any purchased eBook to be read on up to six devices (at least one of those six must be a PC). Although you cannot share purchased eBooks on other people’s devices and accounts, you will have the opportunity to register five Readers to your account and share your books accordingly.”
Out in the real world, readers loved their Sonys. Borders had an exclusive until the end of 2006 and other retailers picked it up. It was hardly ubiquitous and the price scared off some would-be buyers but the package was in place: good hardware, adequate software, closely coupled (if PC-based) bookstore. And, for a change, the DRM was merely annoying.
On October 7, 2007 Sony launched their followup reader, the PRS-505, which quickly became the benchmark for the industry. When Kindle came out, on November 19, it was compared to Sony, not always favorably. Second-tier ebook vendors copied its button-based design and menus.
Times were good; Sony was king. Kindle was the challenger. Both had closely coupled bookstores based on proprietary formats and DRM, identical quality screens, similar pricing. The Sony was solid, thin, metal, good looking. It didn’t have PC-less bookstore access but few thought that was all that important. The eBook world was still a small hobbyist market for people who knew their way around a PC.
Then, in spring 2008, things took a turn for the odd.
Sony, the company that preferred to reinvent the wheel rather than follow somebody else’s lead, that had made billions off proprietary technologies and specifications, that had ruled the gaming world with their Playstation 2 walled garden… Sony suddenly got religion.
Standards religion.
And like many a convert, Sony’s ereader division threw everything away to fully commit to their new creed.
Sony decided to pivot their entire ebook operation away from a closely coupled reader and store ecosystem where they controlled the format, DRM, and the entire user experience to an “open” interoperable system where a publisher-dominated committee controlled the specification and Adobe controlled the DRM and user experience. Even the reading software was based on the generic reading app Adobe licensed to everybody and anybody.
Sony went from king of ebook readers to client of Adobe. Willingly. Proudly, even.
Instead of Sony versus Kindle, it was now Adobe versus Kindle.
Why? I’ve seen no answers other than the usual corporate spin:
Sony today announced that its Reader Digital Book will be the first eBook reading device to support the EPUB format, the International Digital Publishing Forum’s XML-based standard format for reflowable digital books and publications.
Starting next month, new Readers model PRS-505, will be able to access and accept secure and non-secure ebooks in the EPUB format. EPUB has gained acceptance among major trade book publishers, many of whom have committed to begin publishing forthcoming ebooks in the format.
Additionally, the device will support Adobe eBooks with digital rights management and have the capability to reflow standard text-based Portable Document Format (PDF) eBooks for improved flexibility and readability.
Maybe sales were disappointing, maybe they truly believed epub was going to take over the world… They may have had the best of intentions but the outcome was disastrous.
The timing was simply unfortunate. They announced epub support in the spring just as Kindle, sold-out and unavailable until April, was starting to spread out and be a serious competitor. Then, they shipped the epub firmware update in late July but only started selling epub ebooks in their store in December… 2009. Their hardware promoted a format their store didn’t sell. Totally decoupled message.
Bad as that was, they compounded the problem on the hardware side by introducing the PRS-700. It was expensive, it had issues, and it was not well received. It was the one Sony PRS reader to crash and burn outright.
CNET again:
The Good The PRS-700 is sleeker than the Kindle; faster processor speeds up the device; new touch-screen interface offers better ergonomics and is easier to use; with the addition of an optional memory card (SD or Memory Stick Pro), it’s capable of storing thousands of electronic books; font size is adjustable; decent battery life; displays Word and PDF files (and zooms them), shows most image files, and plays MP3 and AAC audio; built-in LED lighting isn’t great but allows you to read in the dark.
The Bad New touch screen is more glare-prone and doesn’t have as much contrast as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s PRS-505; built-in lighting is from the screen periphery and is not true backlighting; eBook Library software isn’t available for Mac owners; there’s no support for Audible audio books; and no built-in wireless access.
The Bottom Line The PRS-700 takes one step forward for Sony digital readers–and a couple leaps back.
After Kindle hit the market, Sony had a chance to build up their ecosystem to take on Amazon’s ebookstore advantage and instead chose to reboot it. Instead of a mature system they’d been refining for two years they ended up with glitchy software, a glitchy bookstore, and a user experience that depended on Adobe customer support. A fair amount of users experiencing activation/authentication issues got ping-ponged between Sony and Adobe. Total disaster was averted by the inventory of the popular 505 but by early 2009 Kindle was clearly king.
Sony’s epub allegiance helped them in the fragmented european markets where dozens of small epub stores sprung up but in the US catalog size was a requirement to match up with Kindle and in the epub camp it was a tossup between Sony and Fictionwise and neither came close to Amazon’s ever-growing bookstore. Interoperability was of limited value when most of the bookstores carried essentially the same BPH titles. And interoperability was torpedoed fatally in the fall when B&N introduced the Nook, supporting epub but with incompatible DRM. Worse, in early 2010 Apple joined in with a third incompatible flavor of epub.
In late 2009 Sony did better on the hardware side: they released a trio of touch screen readers, one with wireless connectivity. But it was too little too late.
The conspiracy was coming.
Sony’s pivot to epub was predicated on selling the hardware and the content separately, each on its own merit. Make the best readers they could and sell them at a fair markup, hoping but not requiring ebook sales at their store. That strategy collapsed in June 2010 when the price fix kicked in fully and B&N moved Nook hardware pricing to near cost and Amazon followed suit.
By the fall, ereader prices had dropped by 50% from 2009 and the ebook market exploded in size as mainstream readers jumped on the low-price hardware from the walled garden vendors. Most generic epub hardware vendors abandoned the US market. Most generic epub bookstores were crippled or killed outright by the conspiracy.
Sony soldiered on for three more years, at first trying to sell premium readers to a market hungry for entry-level cheap readers and then switching to cheap android-based readers… just as the early adopters started moving to premium upgrade readers with high resolution screens and front lighting. The hardware was always good but the features and prices kept missing the mainstream.
Every time Sony zigged, the market zagged.
They got as far as certifying their 2014 models for sale in the US before calling it quits last year. This summer they closed their ebookstore and ceded their customer base to Kobo.
Their pivot away from their walled garden wasn’t the sole cause of Sony’s failure in ebooks–their ebookstore was never fully developed–but it left them vulnerable to competitive pressures brought out by the price fix conspiracy that favored walled gardens exactly like the one Sony had just dismantled.
In a fair marketplace Sony did well enough but in the skewed world the BPHs created their pivot to interoperability proved deadly.
References:
MobileMag Preview: http://www.mobilemag.com/2004/03/25/sony-librie-the-first-ever-e-ink-e-book-reader
Librie Review: http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/071104/bus_16051776.shtml
PRS-500 Review: http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-prs-500-portable-reader-system/
PRS-700 Review: http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-reader-digital-book-prs-700bc-ebook-reader-sony-reader-software-6/
PRS-505 ePub update: http://www.teleread.com/drm/the-update-for-the-sony-prs-505-epub-and-drmed-pdf/
Reader store adopts ePub: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64599