Behind IREX's Partnership With Barnes & Noble: IREX's Kevin Hamilton on how the bookseller is helping his company go head-to-head with Amazon in the e-reader market.
Hamilton recently spoke with Book Business Extra about IREX's partnership with Barnes & Noble and how his company's new device will stand out in the rapidly growing e-reader market.
Book Business Extra: How did IREX's partnership with Barnes & Noble come about? What are the benefits of that partnership?
Kevin Hamilton: ... We've been historically manufacturing devices for the business market and primarily in Western Europe. With the advent of the Amazon Kindle, and the consumer acceptance of that device and other [e-reading] devices, it became clear to us that we needed to be in the North American market with a leisure-reading device rather than a business device. ... We saw the strength of Amazon and the competitive pricing. It's been an extremely aggressive price point that they set, and we concluded that we needed a partner that had the scale and the natural strength to be able to compete at that level and in that way. ... Barnes & Noble was one of the few out there that could go head-to-head with Amazon and say, "We're going to get our share of the market, and we're going to do it in a very aggressive and competitive fashion."
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
- IRex Technologies
- Places:
- Netherlands
- Western Europe