The Mediocre Future Success of the Bonnier E-Reader
E-readers and tablet MIDs are the new black. Eric Schmidt says they'll be our new best friends by 2015, making internet consumption an orgasmic joy. But by now we all know about the strange fate that befell the Pad of Crunches. So, we've got 5 years to go from absurd FUBAR to utopian ecstasy and the team at bonnier_rd isn't wasting any time. They sent their office overseer, Sara Öhrvall, to San Francisco yesterday where she will surely meet, work, and learn about lots of fancy new media things that are getting born there. She will, however, need to keep her eyes on the prize: a Bonnier Media Empire Tablet E-Reader. A media company with an "R&D" department is one of the perks of having a national media monopoly that is itself part of a regional oligopoly. But it is precisely Bonnier's many content and distribution tentacles that make the prospect of it's own e-reader so appealing. But as we learned this week, when you yourself know nothing about tech manufacturing, it tends to blow up in your face. Is the Bonnier Media Empire Tablet E-Reader™ a lawsuit waiting to happen? Or will it be the must have item for Swedish Christmas 2010?
The real answer is probably neither. That the Bonnier empire is destined to have a tastefully designed device that delivers high click through to Expressen and TV4 advertisers, helps SF bio customers stream movies, and Bonnier Publishing customers read, gulp, actual books is certain. Just as certain is that it will be overpriced and high on the novelty factor, but ultimately unnecessary. It will be the next Spotify premium, ubiquitous in Östermalm and non-existent everywhere else.
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Very unclear article. Are they developing a reader or not? What does San Francisco have to do with it? What is the source of this information?
Kennu,
If you talk to any of the media companies in the region (or outside for that matter), they are all talking about, or at least dreaming about, their own Kindle that will save the journalism and put them back to the top of the food chain where they were back in the day when publishing business made money and could be considered business.
The point is this. Most big media companies will poke around the issue and try to build something of their own, until one does it and the whole heard jumps at it ultimately failing to build anything sustainable, let alone getting enough market share to make it but a expensive hardware exercise. First it was Kindle, then nook (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG5fqXOR_6k).
We also saw something that could be seen coming close to an-reader as far as the behavior goes: Reading or browsing in bed or couch anyone? Having next to nothing to loose and being more open to experimentation TechCrunch gave their shot at a tablet for 'couch computing', but was confronted with the realities of the industry. Next up is our media companies. They will throw a big pile of money into it, but still making sure not risking too much, and only dedicating a skunk works team to build it. This will ensure the experience is horrid, which makes the failure that much more obvious. It might take a 6 months or 5 years, but they will do it as the crisis of media increases in speed and they loose money and attempt almost anything before admitting the obvious. Proprietary e-reader is almost as bad an idea as pay-wall ...ok, well not quite that bad, but bad.
I agree about the badness of the idea of building your own e-reader (with its own DRM)... It's a bit like trying to build your own iTunes. Ends in horrors like NetAnttila.Download.
Thanks for the interest in our Bonnier R&D project:) Just to clarify. The Bonnier R&D initiative in San Francisco is focused on prototyping content for the future e-readers, as well as any e-reading that will happen to a great extent on netbooks, tablet PCs, smart phones etc. As been pointed out, many different corporations are involved in building new e-reader devices, software as well as different iTunes-like storefronts. Still, that entire infrastructure will not be very interesting unless there are content and media products available, optimized to the new devices and the new user patterns we expect to see. We really find it fascinating to re-think the magazine, the book and the newspaper to try to understand what can be translated into this new digital experience. Welcome to follow our blog at www.bonnier.com/rd and our Twitter @bonnier_rd as we will post the progress of our project. And we look forward to feedback, thoughts and/or questions.
Nick seriously over-estimates Bonnier. Companies their size perpetuate their own existence regardless of their competence or lack of it. Bonnier are not innovative, ground breaking or what not. They just exist and because of their size they will survive at a quiet humm, they are swedish so lagom is just right. Boring as gröt but stable as the Swedish A-Kassa
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