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By TaiTran, February 2, 2012 9:55 am

Source: Amazon K-10

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By TaiTran, December 30, 2011 6:57 am

1. Haptic control is for more sophisticated tasks on tablets. Why books?
2. Do you really have to spread finger sweat mixed with McDonald’s fat and dirt on your books?
3. If you don’t annotate that much, Kindle Basic would do.
4. I personally feel like Amazon launches Kindle Touch just because this generation has been touch-screen-brainwashed.
5. I’m still very happy with my Kindle 3, now known as Kindle Keyboard.

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By TaiTran, December 17, 2011 6:53 am

As at today there are 13 models of Kindle currently offered:

1. Kindle DX Wi-Fi
2. Kindle DX 3G
3. Kindle Keyboard (was known as Kindle 3) Wi-Fi with Special Offers
4. Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi without Special Offers
5. Kindle Keyboard 3G with Special Offers
6. Kindle Keyboard 3G without Special Offers
7. Kindle (was known as Kindle Basic) with Special Offers
8. Kindle without Special Offers
9. Kindle Touch Wi-Fi with Special Offers
10. Kindle Touch Wi-Fi without Special Offers
11. Kindle Touch 3G with Special Offers
12. Kindle Touch 3G without Special Offers
13. Kindle Fire

Models no longer offered:

1. The first Kindle
2. Kindle 2
3. Kindle 3 with Special Offers

Nevertheless, the number of models are distinctively different enough.

• K-Basic for basic reading without extensive note-taking. This is currently the smallest and lightest.
• K-Keyboard for those with the need to take note and web-surfing
• K-DX for larger screen
• K-Touch for those who crave for haptic interaction
• and K-Fire for a tablet

Except for K-Fire, the e-Ink technology in the models are essentially the same.

When will Amazon launch Kindle Fire 3G?

Kindle 1 vs. Kindle 2

Kindle 2 vs. Kindle DX

Kindle 3 vs. Kindle 2

Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Basic

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By TaiTran, December 15, 2011 12:24 pm

Market size?

Fresh market.

Challenges

1. Piracy
2. User habit
3. Underdeveloped e-payment system. Currently, most e-payment is done through SMS. Content providers share 50-55% upfront revenue with telecommunication service providers

The Pioneers

1. Alezaa.com
2. VCCorp
3. VTC Online confirmed the intention
4. Publishers including FirstNews, Alpha Book, Youth Publisher
5. Lac Viet

A few players have expressed their intention to join the market. More update when their intentions have materialized and publicized.

Show me the money

I have just personally brainstormed a few ideas how players would workaround the challenges and elicit money from buyers

1. Target impulse buying demand
2. Provide convenience for mobile device holders
3. Provide a complete hi-end experience for smart phone holders – good content to go with good hardware
4. The long tail where pirates don’t bother pirating
5. Work with academic institutions to educate and/or coerce students into consuming the contents. Alezaa is deploying this

What categories?

1. Manga!
2. English textbooks
3. Chick lit

Show me MORE money

How to earn enough to be profitable?

I’m using Amazon for a case study

1. Selling Kindles at subsidy to create the platform for content consumption
2. Technology-powered automation to control scaling cost, and to serve the long tail
3. Large scale (one million titles as at December 2011) for network effect which leads to market domination which leads to revenue
4. Use bargain power to drive down costs from suppliers
5. Backward integration to cut the costs from suppliers

Image courtesy: Tiendq

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By TaiTran, September 22, 2011 6:07 am

I face a few issues ordering items from international online shopping sites:

• Many sellers on Amazon and other online shopping sites (e.g. underarmour.com) do not ship goods to my location
• Many sellers require hard-copy credit card scan sent to them
• Customs and import tax handling
• International supports are often ambiguous, time-consuming, and sometimes costly
• PayPal has issues processing my local bank accounts

eBay.vn (a JV by eBay and PeaceSoft) now offers international transaction service, a solution to my issues.

How it works:

1. You find what you need online. Condition: the site allows payment via credit card and/or PayPal
2. Click here to place order via eBay.vn
3. eBay.vn will order the goods and delivers to your door
4. Fee: as for my item, a fee of $15 applied. Import tax & VAT are applied on top depending on the item

I placed an order with them and paid using NganLuong.vn (PeaceSoft’s payment solution, similar to PayPal). Customer service was responsive and nice.

There’s a promotion running, eBay.vn gives VND200,000 coupons to first-time users. Click here to grab it.

There are other similar (and smaller) services, but I put my trust on a company invested by eBay.

You wanna give it a try.

Comments (1)

By TaiTran, August 22, 2011 4:56 am

Thanks @nguyentridat

Reading: recession Flash Sale

Secret’s Out: Sample Sales Move Online http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/technology/internet/07private.html

Even Marked Up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/sales-of-luxury-goods-are-recovering-strongly.html

Flash-Sale Site Shifts Its Model http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/business/flash-sale-site-turns-to-more-traditional-retail-models.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=Gilt&st=cse

A list of flash sale sites:

1. http://www.gilt.com/
2. http://www.fab.com/
3. http://www.hautelook.com/
4. http://www.ideeli.com/
5. http://www.myhabit.com/
6. http://www.ruelala.com/
7. http://www.onekingslane.com/ – Household goods
8. http://www.overstock.com/ – Household goods
9. http://www.ashford.com/ – Watches
10. http://www.bluenile.com/ – Jewelry
11. http://www.jetsetter.com/ – Household goods, Gilt
12. http://www.bloomingdales.com/
13. http://www.saks.com/
14. http://www.bergdorfgoodman.com/

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By TaiTran, August 9, 2011 7:25 pm

Amazon positions itself as a technology company, not a retailer

1. Target the long-tail with million titles, while the largest physical book store may only store 400,000
2. Intensive investment in technology
3. Location: Seattle, near computer talents
4. Product search, data mining, personalized shopping
5. In-house software systems
6. Leader in cloud computing
7. Supplementary product: Kindle
8. Scalability
9. B2C to C2C

Jeff Bezos’s vision and financial expertise

1. Prior to Amazon: Princeton Computer Science & Electrical Engineering graduate, 2 years in Commercial Banking and 4 years in NY Investment Banking
2. Focus on customer service, avoid price war
3. Started with books then diversified
4. Act like a Venture Capitalist to other younger e-commerce firms then get advertising fees from these partners
5. Lock out competition with this partnership network
6. Use sophisticated financial structure including:
   • Private equity (only $1 in 1994)
   • Convertible preferred shares ($8 in 1996)
   • $326m 10% senior discount notes mature in 10 years
   • Debt repurchase
   • $1.25b 4.75% convertible subordinated notes mature in 10 years
   • $680m 6.875% euro-denominated subordinated notes mature in 10 years
   • Live many years on credit rating CCC but the company has had enough cash to spend. Good governance!
7. Good accounting compliance

Operations

1. Revenue sources: commission, advertising, affiliate marketing, cloud computing leasing
2. Order from suppliers after customer has made an order
3. Weathered the dot-com bubble and GFC well

Reference

Cott J., Palepu K., ‘Amazon.com’

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By TaiTran, August 9, 2011 6:55 pm

Read my Kindle 3 Review

You can view your documents on Kindle without plugging your Kindle in. All you have to do is send the document via email to your @kindle.com email and Amazon will automatically convert them to Kindle format. Click here to view formats Kindle 3 support.

You can also send one document to multiple Kindle recipient, as long as your email is approved by the Kindle owners.

You can setup these steps even before your Kindle arrives.

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By TaiTran, April 25, 2009 7:14 pm

A quick review of this article on Boingboing.

As search result becomes relevant to users need and free preview is provided, Google Book Search will soon become the destination of many book readers.

Soon, Google can take advantage of this and allow searchers to actually purchase the books online directly from Google search results.

In terms of business, this makes way for Google to enter e-commerce and even distribution.

If they do, Google has not and will not compete with portal sites like Amazon, but will go from their core competency: search.

Respectively, competition against Google will not be by search, but on other territories that Google has yet dominated, such as virality and social recommendations.