Splitting hairsIgnore the e-reader and tablet revolution at your peril |
But don't bet the farm on it, say the experts.
EAST LONDON - The iPad v Kindle battle shaking up global media and publishing is about to send some waves to South Africa's shores. Experts say 2010 will be the year the e-book reader comes of age and at the moment there are only two main players in the ring: Apple's iPad tablet computing device with web, multimedia, gaming and e-book functionality and the less functional but more established e-book reader from Amazon, the Kindle.
The battle between these two global giants is redefining the rules of publishing and content distribution and the big players in South Africa are watching the fray with an eye for opportunity. Already there are unconfirmed rumours that one major South African media house is talking to Amazon's Kindle division and speculation that another is toying with developing its own e-reader device.
What the key players will say, however, is that they are interested in the market that is emerging on the back of this technology. And well they should be. Mobile phones have yet to come of age as a viable platform for media and publishing houses - even in South Africa where cellphone technology is pretty much ubiquitous at every level of the population.
The Amazon/Apple battle is fascinating not only because it involves two celebrity companies but because a new business model is emerging that could be a fundamental game-changer for publishers and creators of content. The new rules of the game for media houses could lead to dramatically higher margins as distribution and production costs plummet with content pushed through the ether on to mobile devices, such as the Kindle and the iPad.
But with this revolution comes new gatekeepers demanding a charge for these mobile eyeballs. Amazon was taking 70% of revenue of book sales done through the Kindle until Apple came along with the iPad. After a recent face-off with book publisher MacMillan, Amazon has decreased its slice of the pie to 30% on MacMillan's book sales.
But should South Africa's print media be jumping on to the bandwagon when the take-up in this country will be quite slow? On the one hand these devices are reasonably pricey and there's not just a wealth barrier. Many older people may not be keen to learn new tricks.
Clearly, this is the way of the future. In 20 years, e-readers could well be as ubiquitous as cellphones are today. The technology will improve and prices will come down.
New-media experts Matthew Buckland, who heads up the 20FourLabs innovation unit at 24.com, and Elan Lohmann, general manager of Avusa Media Online, say that newspapers should be on as many digital platforms as possible but at the moment it may not be worth South African publishers putting time and money into optimising content for the Kindle or iPad.
But Buckland does point out that there are clever, cheap ways of getting content on the devices, for instance, through RSS feeds or tweaking an existing iPhone app for the iPad. The benefit of this is that users are, in fact, willing to pay for apps in this environment if the Guardian newspaper's recent experience with the iPhone is anything to go by. The British newspaper's app was downloaded for £2.39 about 70 000 times in its first month even though it was up against free iPhone apps from other news organizations, such as Sky News and the Financial Times.
It comes down to interrogating your demographics, says Buckland. If you have a lot of technology content, for instance, your readers and users will most likely be tech-savvy early adopters so being on the iPad or Kindle makes sense. You may also see it as an investment in the future and want first-mover advantage over your competitors.
Views on whether a South African publishing house should be contemplating bringing out its own e-reader or tablet are divided.
Internet and mobile expert Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx research and consultancy agency, thinks it's corporate insanity for a local publishing house to try compete with global businesses, such as Apple and Amazon.
But Buckland says: "The tablet and notebook PC market is wide open. There are little manufacturers creating them all around the world. It's not too ambitious for a media company with a large subscriber base to own one of those devices or enter into a white-label deal with a manufacturer in a joint venture."
Such a device could be marketed to the publisher's subscribers, its content would be embedded as the default and competitors would have to pay to get on to it. Media shouldn't define themselves so narrowly, says Buckland, Nokia, after all, was a Finnish wood-pulp mill and boot manufacturer before it got into communications and cellphones.
Owning the device puts a company in the pound seat as venerable publishers, such as The New York Times have discovered with its subscription-deal with Amazon. At the moment, the paper only gets 30% of the revenue from their Kindle subscriptions so they would be up the creek if their print subscribers switched en masse to a Kindle subscription.
The New York Times has also developed an app for the iPad and, in fact, was present at Steve Jobs's big unveiling of the product recently as a media partner. It is expected that the newspaper's website paywall will go up next year and online subscriptions will include mobile and tablet access - but not Kindle access.
Goldstuck says a local publishing house planning to push content on to the Kindle at this infant stage of take-up in South Africa shows foresight as long as it's not betting the farm on it.
"Just because the technology is there doesn't mean you have to cater for it... You need to be aware of it and if you're not doing it, you need to understand why you're not doing it. To understand why you're not doing it, you also have to understand the opportunities, pitfalls and obstacles. Companies need to engage in that exercise. There's absolutely no question about that."
I'm not an early adopter of technology, preferring instead to read reviews and listen to the gadget freaks I know argue about the pros and cons and then wait a while for prices to come down and the technology to improve.
If, like me, you haven't quite got a handle of what the game-changing Kindle and iPad offer and how they differ, first you need to understand the two big terms being bandied about. The iPad is a "tablet" computer, which is an electronic device with a touch-screen interface, has "e-reader" capabilities as well as web browsing among others. The Kindle is an "e-reader", which is a device for reading content, such as e-books, newspapers and documents. It has wireless connectivity for downloading content directly from Amazon's 410 000 book store and doing other simple web-based tasks.
The iPad ranges from between $499 and $829 and will be available in SA in two months' time while the Kindle - already available here - ranges from $259 to $489. It's best to see them in action so here are two video demos to give you an idea of what they are about:
Would you want one of these? The iPad is certainly an aspirational item I can do without but then I'm not a gamer though I can see the fun in noodling around on it in the kitchen to find an interesting recipe or watching a DVD on it while the kids monopolise the TV.
I have, however, recently become desirous of a Kindle as I read a lot of books and the idea of downloading my favourite authors' latest works for $10 in a heartbeat, looking up cool words on the built-in dictionary and heading off to Wikipedia for more information as I read is extremely compelling. Because it uses e-ink with no backlighting, it will feel pretty similar to a book. A subscription to a couple of overseas papers would be great and if I could also get my local paper and a couple of national weekend papers on it, it would be, quite simply, the cat's pajamas.
*Media columnist Gill Moodie spent 14 years as a salaried hack in print media in South Africa and the UK before escaping to the blogosphere and freelance journalism. She is the publisher of Grubstreet http://grubstreet.co.za/ in between unpacking and packing the infernal dishwasher and bringing up a four-year-old with attitude.
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