時尚雙語:iTune 正逢其時？

The growing popularity of electronic books could offer hope for newspapers

THINGS are suddenly hotting up in the rather obscure field of electronic books and their associated reading devices, the best known of which is Amazon’s Kindle. A new, sleeker version of the Kindle was unveiled on February 9th. Just days earlier, Google said it was making 1.5m free e-books available in a format suitable for smart-phones, such as Apple’s iPhone and handsets powered by Google’s Android software. Amazon said it was working to make e-books available on smart-phones as well as the Kindle. Plastic Logic, the maker of a forthcoming e-reader device, said it had struck distribution deals with several magazines and newspapers. The iPhone, meanwhile, has quietly become the most widely used e-book reader: more people have downloaded e-book software (such as Stanza, eReader and Classics) for iPhones than have bought Kindles. Might e-books be approaching the moment of take-off, akin to Apple’s launch of the iTunes store in 2003, which created a new market for legal music downloads?

The analogy is informative, and not just because the Kindle is often described as “the iPod of books”. Before Apple moved into music downloads, consumers faced a bewildering array of incompatible and incomplete services, none of which had critical mass, thanks in part to the record companies’ inability to agree on a common format. Apple, not being a record company, was able to broker an agreement and define a standard. At first, there was widespread scepticism that anyone would pay for music downloads, given rampant piracy of music on the internet. But being able to find music quickly and easily, rather than fiddling around with file-sharing software, proved far more popular than expected, and iTunes took off. That has not stopped piracy, and download revenues have not been anywhere near enough to compensate for falling CD sales. But iTunes provided a new model for a troubled industry.

Book publishers are in better shape than record labels. Far from harming sales, the Kindle and the iPhone seem to offer incremental revenue, by making it easier for avid readers to buy more titles. Yet if e-readers do take off, the real beneficiaries could be the ailing newspaper and magazine publishers.

The print media are in an awful state—and not just because advertising revenue always dives in recessions. Thanks to the rise of the internet, much of their business, notably classified ads, is migrating rapidly to the web. Meanwhile, most have failed to find a decent online business model. Giving news away on the internet, as most newspapers do, and selling online advertising alongside it, is not sustainable because the ad rates are so much lower online. Attempts to charge subscription fees or set up “micropayment” schemes have failed.

But consumers treat phones (and Kindles) differently from PCs. People pay for text messages, even though e-mail is free. Apple has sold millions of iPhone applications through the iTunes store. Several newspapers and magazines are already available, by subscription, to Kindle users. As with iTunes, people are happy to pay once it is made easy.

So it is not unreasonable to suppose that someone could step in, as Apple did with music, and introduce a comprehensive and easy-to-use shopfront, through which books, newspapers and magazines could be supplied to paying customers. The convenience of having content delivered to devices automatically overnight, and being able to flick quickly between stories at the breakfast table, when underground or on an aeroplane, might be something that people will pay for. If this approach took off, newspapers would no longer depend on advertisers and could wind down their paper editions. (They could also quietly scale back their free websites.)

How Apple could kill the Kindle

Amazon clearly has designs on this market with the Kindle, even though it is primarily intended for reading e-books. But Apple is arguably in a much stronger position. There are already millions of iPhones and touch-screen iPods in circulation, and the company has long been rumoured to be working on a larger “tablet” device. Selling e-books and newspapers via iTunes, which already has millions of paying customers, would be simple. True, Steve Jobs, Apple’s mercurial boss, has expressed scepticism about e-readers, claiming that “people don’t read any more”. But Mr Jobs has a record of insisting that Apple is not interested in making a particular product (a video iPod, a mobile phone)—right up until the moment when he unveils one. Might e-books soon be the next example?

黯淡的電子書及電子閱讀器市場一夜之間開始變得炙手可熱。最爲著名的電子書閱讀器品牌亞馬孫Kindle，於今年二月十九日推出了更爲時尚的新款型。就在幾天之前，Google宣稱已將150萬冊電子書轉化爲免費的適合用智能電話（諸如蘋果的iPhone和安裝谷歌 Android操作系統的手機）閱讀的格式。亞馬孫亦聲稱其正致力於將智能手機閱讀電子書閱讀變得可能。作爲即將面市的某電子閱讀器的製造商，英國塑膠邏輯公司(Plastic logic)則表示已與數家報紙雜誌達成分銷協議。與此同時，iPhone則低調的成爲最爲廣泛使用的電子書閱讀設備---更多的人選擇使用iPhone下載安裝電子書閱讀軟件(如Stanza, eReader and Classics等)而非購買Kindle。如此種種是否預示着，正如2003年蘋果公司推出iTune音樂商店之後帶來合法音樂下載的熱潮那樣，電子書市場也起飛在即?
??
??這種類比無疑是有根據的，不僅僅因爲Kindle常被冠以“書中iPod”之稱。在蘋果公司進軍音樂下載之前，消費者們面臨着一系列令人眼花繚亂且不可兼容的不完善選擇，網絡音樂沒有任何主流格式，這一點部分歸結於唱片公司們無力達成統一。不過，唱片業界外的蘋果公司卻由此作爲中間人協助它們達成協議並制定了統一標準。起初，在網絡音樂下載侵權成風的形勢下，大多數人對付費下載的市場存有疑慮。但事實證明，由於能夠快速便捷的搜索並下載音樂而無需再埋頭於文件共享軟件， 蘋果公司開發出的iTune受到消費者極大的青睞。雖然這樣並未阻斷侵權，下載獲得的收益也從未能夠彌補CD銷量下滑的缺口，但iTune無疑爲飽受困擾的音樂市場提供了一種新模式。
??
??相形於唱片公司，圖書出版商們有着更好的組織。電子書閱讀器並未對圖書銷售產生負面影響，反之，通過向熱切的讀者提供更多的消費選擇，Kindle和iPhone們似乎帶來了利潤增長。不過一旦電子閱讀器真的實現了快速發展，真正的受益者將會是面臨困境的報紙和雜誌出版商。
??
? 如今的出版界正處於進退維谷的窘境---這並非僅由廣告收入紛紛縮減跳水所致。隨着因特網的崛起，大部分印刷媒介的業務，尤其是分類廣告，正迅速被轉移到網絡上。然而，絕大多數參與者尚未探尋出一個合適的在線商業模式。鑑於在線廣告收取的費用較低，像大多數報紙所做的那樣將新聞發佈在網上並在一旁安插廣告，並不足以維持長期經營。諸如收取訂閱費或者辦理“小額交易”等的嘗試也均以失敗而告終。
??
但消費者們對待手機（包括kindle）的態度相形於電腦截然不同。即便有免費的電子郵件，人們依然樂意爲短信買單。通過iTune音樂商店，蘋果公司賣出了數以百萬計的iPhone。通過訂閱，Kindle的使用者們同樣可以瀏覽數種報紙和雜誌。就像使用iTune一樣，一旦事情變得輕鬆便捷，人們將樂於消費。
??
??所以，設想有朝一日會有人開發出一種像音樂商店那樣全面又易於操作的閱讀平臺並非沒有道理。報紙和雜誌將以這種平臺爲媒介向付費讀者們提供資訊。書報的內容在前一晚被自動發送到閱讀器上，人們在早餐桌前，地鐵裏，飛機上都可以快速瀏覽。這種便利的銷售方式具有一定的市場潛力，如果得以實現，報界就無需再依賴廣告收入並能夠逐漸縮減其紙質印刷版本（同時也可以私下的相應縮減其免費網頁）。
??
??蘋果如何能擊敗亞馬孫Kindle
??顯而易見的是，即便設計Kindle的最初目的是用於閱讀電子書，亞馬孫在這個市場上仍有所規劃。但可以說蘋果公司擁有更強勢的地位。市場上已經流通着數百萬計的iPhone和觸屏iPod，而且根據長久以來的傳言，蘋果公司正醞釀着一個更廣泛的“平板”設備。通過iTune向業已存在的幾百萬客戶銷售電子書和報紙將不是難事。誠然，蘋果公司精明的老闆史蒂夫·喬布斯（Steve Jobs）曾對電子書閱讀器表示質疑，聲稱“人們已經不再讀書”。但就以往的情況看，喬布斯先生曾經在新產品即將發佈之前（如ipod視頻，移動電話）還一直堅稱公司對其並無興趣，誰又知道電子書會不會很快就成爲下一個例證呢？