Retail Shelf Space Tight for E-Readers this Fall
As e-reader promotions and pricing heat up, there may be little room at retail beyond the Kindle, Nook and iPad, said dealers we polled. Sales of Sony’s e-readers have slowed, and Staples said Wednesday it was adding Amazon’s Kindle in its more than 1,500 stores. Staples had carried the Sony e-readers in a display near the PC peripheral section. One of the early sellers of Sony e-readers, Crutchfield, saw sales slow once the product became widely available, said Rick Souder, executive vice president of merchandising.
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"This year it will the Kindle, the Nook, the iPad and everybody else,” Souder said. “There have been very good MP3 players over time, but they haven’t knocked Apple’s iPod below an 80 percent marketshare and I assume this will be similar."
Some retailers are awaiting the arrival of tier one brands like LG Electronics and Samsung for the e-reader to take off as prices drop below $100. Samsung dropped plans for a dedicated e-reader and instead will introduce a tablet PC this fall to compete against Apple’s iPad. LG Display, which assembles electrophoretic displays for E-Ink, will introduce 9.7-inch color and 19-inch flexible electrophoretic displays late this year. LG Display supplies the 9.7-inch LCDs at the heart of the iPad and the Kindle’s 9.7 inch display.
"The only people selling e-books are Apple and Amazon, and that’s the majority of it right now,” said BrandsMart President Michael Perlman. “What I'm waiting for is an open format, with LG and Samsung starting to get into it with $68 and $88” e-readers. It’s a hot category, and long term I am bullish on it, but this year is going to be tough."
Without access to the Kindle, Nook or iPad, retailers are scrambling to fill out product lines that typically start with Sony models. Nebraska Furniture Mart is weighing adding Viewsonic e-readers and may be interested in Coby devices if they come to market, said Mark Shaw, the company’s CE merchandising director.
With many models available, e-reader suppliers are jockeying for tight retail shelf space, said makers of the devices. Pandigital, which struggled with its first LCD-based Novel e-reader, shipped a revamped version with a 7-inch display in September and plans to add an electrophoretic version in three or four weeks, said Assistant Vice President Jason Topel. Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s are carrying the new LCD-based Novel ($169), whose internal memory doubled to 2 GB, he said. BJ’s Wholesale Club also picked up the Novel e-reader.
As Pandigital expanded in warehouse clubs, Borders chopped the price of Kobo’s e-reader to $129 from $139 and lowered an Alurtek model to $99 from $119. The Kodo model at $129 is USB-only and lacks the Wi-Fi capability found in the entry-level Kindle priced $10 higher. The Aluratek e-reader was at $170 a few months ago. Kobo’s model came out at $150 in March. Kobo, which has an e-book store, Monday opened a New York City office, hiring Jan Ehrlich, ex-Texterity, as director of newspaper and magazines and Ami Greko, formerly of GetGlue, as senior manager for book vendor relations. Kobo plans to have a half-dozen employees in the New York office, a spokeswoman said. The company has the backing of Borders as well as Indigo Books and Music in Canada and China’s Cheung Kong Holdings.
"I don’t have iPad, Kindle or Nook,” Nebraska’s Shaw said. “I'll be carrying some off brand stuff, but there again consumers want those three brands. I'm not really in the game at this point.”