Today we can consider the war of online music and the devices able to play it is over. One would need an earthquake for Apple to see its leadership disputed, apart from perhaps Microsoft with its Zune, nobody really believes that an earthquake will happen.
The war of distribution of films and television series in is still at the beginning, and there are still too many people in this market to know who will win. One can list the major players: Apple, Netflix, Internet service providers but also the studios which want to keep the hand on their contents. Since they are very powerful and have learned from the music experiment, they will not make the same mistake.
There also is still a practically virgin field, the digital book. Currently, there is only Sony and especially Amazon who are present. Kindle from Amazon has had a nice success in the United States. But there are many players who do not want to to pass this opportunity. Among them one counts Asustek and AU Optonic who announced that they want to release a eBook for less than 100$, but also according to rumour, Apple. Its famous tablet that should arrive at the beginning of 2010 (one speaks about 300.000 to 400.000 units for the launch) would be designed to also run as an eBook. From a commercial point of view it is practically obvious that Apple is interested in this market. It would be enough for them to have the means of reading for then being able to sell books via the inevitable iTunes Store present on tens of million of computers. The installed base and the notoriety of the iTunes Store is such that Apple could take over the market on the two aspects, namely quality of the reading device, but also in the volume of the contents.
To return to the title of this news, the war seems have started. One proof is the decision of Amazon to lower the price of its Kindle to $259 and to launch it in 100 countries. The goal seems obvious, to offer its reader as the reference produce as quickly as possible and thus to reach the critical mass ensuring the viability of its system of online sales.
This movement towards the digital book seems irreversible in the medium-term. We do not hide from you that we will miss the pleasure to open a book, to smell the odor of the old paper or to browse in the secondhand booksellers. The next generations will not know what they have missed.
