So what will be in this year’s Christmas stocking?

We now have all the technology contenders lined up the Christmas shelves, sometimes side by side and sometime under an exclusive umbrella. The Kindle Fire has landed in the UK alongside the Nook, Apple have released, what they said they would never do – a smaller iPad, Microsoft bumble along as ever trying to play catch-up and Samsung continue to get the sales. Now even the children have their own LeapPad 2, a child-friendly tablet computer, or the alternative robust looking Kurio tablet.

Watch any group of people, on trains, buses, in concerts, or just walking the streets and you will see the apparent techno zombies with ear jacks, their dexterous thumbs and fingers tapping out messages and mail and others reading not books and magazines, but their latest Facebook updates.

There will always be the traditional gifts, toys, books, games and even that unwanted pair of socks, or present you save to pass on to someone else next year. But technology is fast becoming the safe buy.

So what technology would be top of your letter to Santa and how will you use it and how will it impact you and those around you? Alternatively what technology would you like to give as a gift and why?

Many will be driven to buy a tablet for their children, or even their loved ones. It may be more than the price of the traditional impulse, or last chance buy, but as it becomes that safe bet buy for those with often little imagination, and also often oblivious to the potential implications.

It is an interesting thought that many families will be split up this Christmas, not by physical distance, but will be in the same house, but separated by technology and the desire to watch, listen, read or play by themselves. As a child we always wanted to watch, or play something else – we now can.  A somewhat striking study by Pearson, claims that pupils aged 11 and under now spent three times as long “on screen” as they do buried in a book. Some one in six parents admit that they never read to their children before bedtime and a third share a book no more than once a week.  

So the impact of the new technology may be connecting people over social networks, but at the same time potentially alienating them in their immediate social environment. That present you think is going to make someone very happy, may make this Christmas very different for the family and close friends.

Are Consumers Now in the Digital Driving Seat?

Yesterday’s Apple announcements on the iPhone 5 were greeted with the usually hoops and wows but also with a few more yawns and so what’s. Its not so much that Steve Jobs is missing as much as the marketplace is shifting and moving on and more of the same isn’t that stimulating. Wired described it as being ‘mostly it is the Toyota Prius of phone updates’.

Sometime you just sense a change in the air. It’s like when winter changes to spring, the days start to lengthen, blossom and colour burst forth, and the sun’s rays become warmer and we start to think about summer. Business and technology is not different, just less marked and has many individual but intertwined seasons. The cycle can be seen as moving from innovation, to adaption to the market, to wide adoption within the market, to commodity and commodity upgrades and then, back to innovation. Because technology alone is not enough the subsequent innovation may be more commercially and market driven.

We are clearly seeing the emergence of the market demand for the technology to be device agnostic. This is because the technology itself is now becoming commoditised. Consumers are looking beyond the ‘wow’ factors and more at their own needs. Android has been the driver of much change and has clipped the wings of Apple. It may ‘borrowed’ some things on its journey and Samsung may have lost one battle on Apple’s home soil, but the change has happened and Apple now has to respond, is no longer in a market of one and that is good for everyone, including Apple. The Nexus 7 and Samsung Note are becoming serious tablet contenders and who would have thought the Kindle Fire, a basic tablet with a lower cut of Android, no camera and few Apps would secure a reported 22% of the US tablet market?

However, we are now also seeing some real convergence between mobile devices as smartphones get smarter, faster and with bigger screens, whilst tablets shrink to meet them. Just as eInk was always going to be and was clearly a significant catalyst of change, it now looks a casualty of the process it succeeded in kick starting. Amazon retain their loyalty with it some may say more as an insurance policy than a strategic bet. It is easy to see the same fate for the early smartphones and tablets. As many early ereader producers will testify, technology without the platform is now a waste of time.

It’s no longer about formats, DRM, standards and more about online, anytime, anywhere, any device. This itself changes both the package and its delivery in ways we are only just starting to see today.

The market is now focused on ‘platforms’ and less on devices, on online on-demand services and less on offline, accepting the consumer merely licences and doesn’t own files, and changing business models that continually engage with the consumer. These changes are fundamental and start to open up new business models which in turn fuel new technology. Remember Blockbuster and how we used to rent videos from the store, then came Netflix and Lovefilm with their postal offers and now everything is going on-demand and streamed importantly to aany device anywhere, anytime. Remember record stores and megastores, then came iTunes with DRM, then came MP3 now we have Spotify. The basic content didn’t change radically, what changed was how we found it, acquired it and consumed it.  

So where does this leave book publishing and its alliances to the new technology and the changing consumer market? Unlike music and video, books have to compete head to head with the physical product and existing model. Merely driving down the digital price to a silly point like 20p will itself force change but are we ready or even thought through the implications or are we like many today spreading our bets and hoping one will come in?

Somewhat related:

A funny cartoon that brought a smile to our faces over upgrade announcements.

Amazon: Fiction Prizes, Japan and KF8

Another day and that great river Amazon keeps on flowing. Today three disjointed pieces of news demonstrate why Amazon continues to chart its own course and is a significant publishing force.

First the fairly insignificant news that France Telecom Orange is co-developing its own ebook store as an alternative to Kindle. Orange intend to partner with rival French cellco SFR and the French Library Union and aim to develop a digital library. They believe that they can achieve their Kindle competing goals by a hosting a wider range of French titles than Amazon and will offer users the ability to pay via the mobile bill. Orange investment is claimed to be around €5m and although the French market may be seen by some as parochial, it is already getting crowded with Kobo teaming up with Fnac. We doubt Orange will make it to prize ceremony, but believe they will help raise the ebook profile in France. Forget the Orange 2011 winner,Téa Obreht and her debut novel, 'The Tiger's Wife', some would give the Fiction Prize to Orange itself.

Whilst Kobo are setting their sights on France and the UK and Orange are planning to ‘tango’ the Kindle in France, Amazon is rumoured to be entering the Japanese e-book market and to set up an online e-book store this year. The rumour is supported by claims that Amazon is in contractual negotiations with publishers such as Shogakukan, Shueisha, Kodansha, Shinchosha and PHP Institute Inc is expected to provide about 1,000 digitized titles to Amazon.

Japanese publishers have been reluctant to provide content to Amazon over concerns that the retailer will sell e-books at a discount. Although the Japanese e-book market in 2010 was estimated at only 65 billion yen ($846.9 million) the print book and magazine market is worth about 2 trillion yen. One could say the Amazon presents a clear replay of the US Black Ships that opened up Japanese trade. It is easy to see this as a clear strategic step for Amazon whilst others scrap and try to play catch up in easier markets.

Finally Amazon has unveiled its next-generation file-format for Kindle books. Kindle Format 8 (KF8) will replace Mobi 7, and it brings support for HTML5 and CSS3. Obviously this is not epub 3.1 and some would say is somewhat behind that standard, but it may be a significant and more timely route for many and better tuned to the market.

KF8 will obviously enable publishers to create better-looking books with richer formatting, which could include fixed and floated elements, embedded fonts and drop-caps, text on background images, numbered and bulleted lists, and much more. Children’s books could now “set on Fire” with imagery, fixed layouts and pop-ups; comics and graphic novels could benefit from ‘Kindle Panel Views’; reference books could be made more attractive by superior diagrams and cookbooks and travel guides cold start to come to life.

Some will say that isn’t enough, but it enables the Kindle Fire to display the enhanced ebooks in play today and if encourages more publishers to develop the content, then it may be a far smarter move than developing standards and expecting everyone to merely adopt them. Amazon’s KF8 formatting capabilities are outlined in full on its website.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet will be the first to support the KF8 with them predicting support on its latest generation of e-ink Kindles “in the coming months”, along with its free Kindle apps for other platforms.

Finally, Amazon are planning enhancements to its Kindle Publisher Tools through KindleGen 2 which will create Kindle content from sources such as HTML, XHTML, and EPUB. This will be complimented by Kindle Previewer 2 which will provide publisher previews on how titles will look on Kindle devices and apps.

The Amazon keeps flowing and appears to be still one step ahead in their planning and execution.

Kindle Fire is Blazin

When Apple first launched its iPad2 it sold 2.5 million units in its first month and set the bar very high for all that would follow.

Today a leaked sales report on the tech site Cult of Android claims that Amazon’s new Kindle Fire has currently raked up 250K of pre orders in its first week and if that level of demand is maintained it could reach 2.5 million of pre orders alone before it goes on sale on November 15^th.

Irrespective of whether the level of demand is sustained it clearly is going to be the US gift for Christmas this year and a serious Apple contender. Bezos has obviously pitched the price perfect and also has stuck to his ‘keep it simple and focused mantra’ that has enabled Kindle to become a clear contender in the emerging media player market.

It begs the question what the others will have to do to compete as Apple captures the high ticket, design icon end of the market and Amazon the low end no frills media integrated end.

It also begs the question as to how some of the other ereader players will survive not just in competing with these must have devices but also with the impact of their different but closed media and platform offers? What is perceived as an open market for ebooks could quickly change if there are two players who dominate it and this is turn may force players to look at the obvious streaming opportunities and away from downloads as we know them today.

Amazon Tablet - The Price is Right

At $199 Amazon has proved it knows how to price. The question now is whether consumers want a Rolls Royce or a mini. Despite no mike or camera and being booksize, we think Amazon have got it right especially with 3G inside.

Want one!