My rendering: Book publishers giving their content to the Amazons, Apples, and other hardware vendors of the world because they don’t know how to produce hardware is comparable to their handing over their content (and revenue) to book printers because they don’t know how to print books. The tablet is the new print delivery vehicle. So just as publishers go to China to print their books, they need to partner with Chinese hardware companies to produce their own inhouse tablets.
Of course scale will matter, and publishers like Hal Leonard, the largest music print publisher in the world with institutional buyers, get to be first. The Kindle will be just one of three or four tablets per household. One for music, one for Bibles, one for other books, one for cookbooks, and so on. Each tablet will have its own focus, features, and store.
And they will be free with a subscription to the publisher's wares.
[Mike Cane linked to this post. My apologies on edits to the quote he excerpted. Didn't change the substance of the thought, just the styling.]
