From Pocket-Sized Books To Light Up Pages, New eReaders From Kobo, Amazon

Winter is coming, which means it’s time for leading eBook Reader makers to unveil their new next generation of devices. For my weekly Gearing Up report on Studio 12 News, I look at the all-new features being offered by Kobo here in Canada and by Amazon in the United States.

While Amazon hasn’t explained why some of their Kindle devices are getting a launch in Europe, but not in Canada, my take is that Amazon needs to have their full suite of content stores in place. This means music, movies, and video games on top of books. Their strategy is to sell their devices at cost (knowing Apple, Samsung can’t match that) and make money instead through content.

From following the development of online music stores I can tell you that the licensing process is complicated enough that such agreements have to be worked out one market at a time, and so markets like Europe are worked out before smaller markets like Canada. My guess is that Amazon will turn to Canada to launch their new stores in 2013 with their new Kindles finally arriving later in the same year.

Here’s the eReaders featured in my piece: