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WHS partners with Kobo to launch e-reader
13.10.11 | Lisa Campbell
W H Smith has partnered with Kobo to launch the first wifi touch-screen e-reader in the UK later this month.
The chain bookseller announced the partnership today (13th October) at the same time as its financial results for the year ending 31st August 2011, in which the company revealed it has increased group profit-before-tax by 4% from £89m in 2010 to £93m. It is Kobo's second European deal this week: on Tuesday it announced similar partnership with the French retailer Fnac.
WHS said: “We have continued to develop our presence in the growing e-books market and have today announced a new partnership with Kobo, building on the success of our e-books development to date. From the middle of October, we will launch a range of WiFi e-reading devices, including the first WiFi touch screen e-reader widely available in the UK. All of the devices will have access to over 2.2 million titles."
On the bookseller’s website, it says: “Search and browse e-Books at WHSmith.co.uk. When you have found your eBook click Buy and we'll pass you to Kobo's website to complete your purchase."
Despite increasing overall group profit, overall group sales for the year slumped to £1,273m, a decrease of 5% like-for-like. High street sales were down 5% at £818m and down 6% on a like-for-like basis. Sales in the company’s travel sector grew by 1% to £455m, but were down 3% on a like-for-like basis. However, operating profit in the travel sector increased by 8% to £57m—hailed as a “record profit performance" for the company. The high street sector increased operating profit to £52m, up 2% on the prior year.
In terms of the high street, WHS said: “We continue with our strategy to rebalance the mix of the business towards our core categories whilst reducing our presence in entertainment."
Book sales for WHS were down 4% but gross margin was up year on year. The retailer said that while the books market remained “soft" non-fiction sales improved on last year.
WHS said: “We saw encouraging share performance versus the general retail market as we continue to implement our strategy to build our authority as a popular book specialist, providing our customers with choice, great value and promotions like the successful Richard and Judy Book Club."
The company also revealed it had plans to open 35 more travel units in the UK in 2011/2012 on top of the existing 35 and plans 25 more international shops.
Kate Swann, group chief executive for WHS, said: "We have delivered a good performance across the group, despite a challenging trading environment, with further profit growth from high street and record profit in travel. We have seen another year of strong cash generation from both businesses and this is reflected in a 16% increase in the full year dividend and a further return of cash to shareholders.
“The economic conditions remain challenging, however we have planned accordingly. We are a resilient business with a strong and consistent record of both profit growth and cash generation and have opportunities for growth in both the UK and internationally."
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That's the Waterstone's ereader for next year scuppered then.
Way to go, Big W.
Way to go.
'W H Smith has partnered with Kobo to launch the first wifi touch-screen e-reader in the UK later this month.'
mmm...I think you'll find that the new Sony PRST1 is wifi touch screen as well as some of its older models.
Excellent news. Waterstones should have done this deal months ago; I don't know why they are dragging their heels.
What I don’t understand is in the long term will most readers not just buy direct from places like Kobo, or Apple or Kindle ??
We as a publisher sell via these outlets anyway, but longer term this is not a fix for the retailers, but just a short term way of getting some referral income, but in the end what’s their plan to stop them being cut out of the loop totally?
If readers just start going direct to the actual end seller (which the retailers are themselves introducing to the readers), then what ??
www.andrewsuk.com
Slightly lazy churnalism from the Bookseller there. Press release says 'first widely available' one. (That also seems a bit dodgy to be honest as Sonys aren't exactly hard to get hold of.)
How long will it be before publishers and booksellers finally see sense and provide ereaders for free? The long-term survival of both publishers and booksellers relies on a relentless focus on realising the value of content and not on the method by which the content is delivered. This must be part of a future-proofing vision for publishing or we hand all the value-added functions to IT companies.
“We continue with our strategy to rebalance the mix of the business towards our core categories whilst reducing our presence in entertainment."
This is why they are probably doomed. They think that Amazon is just a rival bookseller when in fact Amazon is gearing up to be a complete entertainment platform. Look at the Kindle Fire - it's not really a poor man's iPad, it's a client device for Amazon's entertainment platform. Not only does it do e-books and magazines in colour, it plays MP3's, TV shows and movies (with the Amazon Prime subscription of $79 per year you get unlimited TV and movies), games, android apps, and high speed web browsing. Also you get all your content stored on Amazon's cloud servers.
WHS's cargo-cult response to Amazon's current kindle offerings are too little too late. Once the Kindle Fire hits the UK they will have nothing to compete with it. Even if they try partner with a tablet PC supplier, they will not have the integrated back-end to compete with Amazon.
I don't understand why people would pay a lot of money on ae-reader, when if you spend a bit more you can get a iPad that does so much more.
E-readers need to become more versatile,seriously touch screen in this day is not really a ground breaking selling point.
In what world is an iPad anywhere near the cost of any e-reader on the market? Most e-readers are sub £100 and even the most useless iPad is £399.
The iPad does everything, it's a laptop, a web browser, a telly, an e-reader, a stereo, if it could turn into a kettle it would be perfect. with n e-reader you can download and read books, or (for the more advanced models) look at facebook/twitter in black and white. Hardly cutting edge stuff.
Personally I think the e-reader is in danger of becoming a bit like the old mini disk players, great for 5 mins but a pointless bit of tech. They need to become better, more interactive, even if they a facility to connect with other readers in your area (like the Nintendo DS) so you could have virtual book groups...or something more exciting than Ohhh touch screen...it's just not a selling point these days, it's expected.
You can't read a book on it, with one hand, in direct sunlight though, can you? For me, also bookish(!), that means a dedicated ereader will win hands down.
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