Yet Another Move By Amazon To Weaken Other Publishers

Every few weeks, the Amazon juggernaut rolls forward, one step at a time, towards its unstated goal of dominating the entire book industry value chain. 

The progress to date:

Author sign-ups? Check.

Self-publishing? Check.

Publishing? Check.

Selling paper books? Check – various paper book publishers have been acquired. 

Selling eBooks? Check.

A platform for “consuming” the books? Mail oui. Check.

Recommendations? Check and check.

Short of actually robo-reading books (entrepreneurs, I am patenting that idea right now), it has forward and backward-integrated into almost every aspect of the book value chain. 

But one of the key reasons it succeeds so brilliantly is that it continuously makes it easier for book creators and book consumers to each get what they want: Money. Audience. Low-cost books.

And in that process, it has disrupted the publishing industry like few things have, in the past.  

Consider what it did with author royalties recently, as an example: 

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Smaller Connector Causes Big Pain?

 

A smaller connector on the next iPhone may cause a lot of pain to existing Apple device owners and fanboys (full disclosure: I love my Mac Book Air and my iPad, but I just can’t see myself with an iPhone).

Since the familiar 30-pin connector remained unchanged starting with the iPod (does anyone still remember what that is…was?), gazillions of Apple accessories have been built and sold that work with the connector.

So in fell swoop Apple might imperil millions, nay, billions of dollars (this report from ABI research estimates the global aftermarket handset accessories to be worth $36B, out of which $20B is specific to smartphones; it then follows that if Apple’s iOS has a ~ 23% global market share, Apple device owners may be responsible for 10% (~ $2B) to 20% (~ $4B) of that spend) worth of accessories. 

But because of exactly that reason ($2B to $4B of Apple accessory spend just this year) I doubt if Apple will switch gears on its fans just like that.

Likely some kind of el-cheapo converter or adapter will be included so chargers and such still work – but that will be the extent of it. But of course, the worse Apple treats its customers, the more they like it – so I doubt if we will see a huge hue and cry either. So what’s the take-away? One way would be to declare that you’ve had it with Apple’s proprietary eco-system (which greatly increases your switching costs) and jump ship to a more standardized world. The other way might be to consider investments in bluetooth-based accessories that might help you adapt more easily to Apple’s eventual adoption of micro-USB (which the rest of the civilized world currently uses).