In his blog on Computerworld, Mike Elgan covers a recent statement by Verizon Wireless executive Tony Lewis that Verizon might sell Kindle-like e-book devices to Verizon customers, bundled with wireless data plans just like cell phones.
Elgan is initially skeptical at the idea of a cell phone company—known, historically, for nickel-and-diming customers on everything from bandwidth to ringtones to SMS messaging—competing with Amazon, who gives the Kindle’s wireless service away for free. He then offers some tips for how Verizon could succeed with such a device—make it better than the Kindle, minimize bandwidth charges, support wi-fi, bundle it with cellphones, and partner with Amazon on sales.
Verizon would make an interesting entrant into the e-book biz. The current big two e-reader companies, Amazon and Sony, made their names in selling content and hardware, respectively. We have not yet had an e-book vendor who starts from the perspective of selling the network.
For verizon content have always been seen as a cost to drive network consumer to their services, this means that unlike amazon who need the book sales to cover all expanses, this means that they arent tgat likely to drive the sales prize as far down as posible.
Verizon will probably put a lot more focus on Public domain and other “free” content then amazon, and is more likely to opt for subscrition or library like models then the clasical and deaply flawed model of selling ebooks.
Just to clarify my above statement i think that verizon’s strategy will be to underbid amazon in short term cost. And that they might be hugely successfull at it.