Kobo touts holiday ereading success

By Geoff Duncan December 28, 2010

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Amazon.com might be trumpeting its Kindle device as its best-selling and most-gifted item ever, but it’s not the only player in the ereader market. Kobo wants folks to know that its ereading ecosystem has had a banner end-of-year season as well, with downloads from its eBook store at the highest level ever, over a million people connecting to Kobo, and “hundreds of thousands” of devices being activated each day since Christmas Eve—although, like Amazon, Kobo isn’t giving out any exact sales numbers.

“Earlier this month we predicted that Christmas would be a record breaker for Kobo, and we have exceeded our expectations driving several ebook downloads per second since Christmas Eve,” said Kobo CE Michael Serbinis, in a statement. “I would like to thank our customers for choosing Kobo to start building their digital library this Christmas. Our success this holiday season is a pre-cursor to a New Year with people reading more than ever thanks to ebooks and Kobo.”

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The Kobo ecosystem consists of dedicated readers with E-Ink displays (available from Kobo and Borders), as well as desktop and mobile applications for Macs and PCS, along with iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm mobile devices. Kobo also claims to have one of the largest ebook stores, with over 2.2 million book, magazines, and newspaper titles available.

According to Kobo, holiday activity from customers has been notable for its international character, with customers connecting from more than 130 countries: big international gains from Germany, the Netherlands, and Singapore, in addition to many English-speaking and Commonwealth countries. Kobo says they’re also seeing a healthy mix of devices, with ereaders and tablets counting for the largest portion of sales. Overall, Kobo says sales are 50 times higher this year than last year. Kobo is also the first ebook service to launch an ebook gifting and goft card program that delivered ebooks to recipients’ email accounts on Christmas morning.

Oh, and the most popular purchased and gifted books for Kobo this season? Those lists were dominated by Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, with Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol taking third place in the U.S. market and Emma Donahue’s Room coming in as the third most-gifted book for the season.

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Emerging Tech

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Outdoors

Juiced Bikes offers 20% off on all e-bikes amid signs of bankruptcy

Juiced Bikes Scrambler ebike

A “20% off sitewide” banner on top of a company’s website should normally be cause for glee among customers. Except if you’re a fan of that company’s products and its executives remain silent amid mounting signs that said company might be on the brink of bankruptcy.That’s what’s happening with Juiced Bikes, the San Diego-based maker of e-bikes.According to numerous customer reports, Juiced Bikes has completely stopped responding to customer inquiries for some time, while its website is out of stock on all products. There are also numerous testimonies of layoffs at the company.Even more worrying signs are also piling up: The company’s assets, including its existing inventory of products, is appearing as listed for sale on an auction website used by companies that go out of business.In addition, a court case has been filed in New York against parent company Juiced Inc. and Juiced Bike founder Tora Harris, according to Trellis, a state trial court legal research platform.Founded in 2009 by Harris, a U.S. high-jump Olympian, Juiced Bikes was one of the early pioneers of the direct-to-consumer e-bike brands in the U.S. market.The company’s e-bikes developed a loyal fandom through the years. Last year, Digital Trends named the Juiced Bikes Scorpion X2 as the best moped-style e-bike for 2023, citing its versatility, rich feature set, and performance.The company has so far stayed silent amid all the reports. But should its bankruptcy be confirmed, it could legitimately be attributed to the post-pandemic whiplash experienced by the e-bike industry over the past few years. The Covid-19 pandemic had led to a huge spike in demand for e-bikes just as supply chains became heavily constrained. This led to a ramp-up of e-bike production to match the high demand. But when consumer demand dropped after the pandemic, e-bike makers were left with large stock surpluses.The good news is that the downturn phase might soon be over just as the industry is experiencing a wave of mergers and acquisitions, according to a report by Houlihan Lokey.This may mean that even if Juiced Bikes is indeed going under, the brand and its products might find a buyer and show up again on streets and trails.

Cars

Volkswagen plans 8 new affordable EVs by 2027, report says

volkswagen affordable evs 2027 id 2all

Back in the early 1970s, when soaring oil prices stifled consumer demand for gas-powered vehicles, Volkswagen took a bet on a battery system that would power its first-ever electric concept vehicle, the Elektro Bus.
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Cars

Nissan launches charging network, gives Ariya access to Tesla SuperChargers

nissan charging ariya superchargers at station

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