Kobo is back at it again, making it difficult for people to buy their ereaders, just like they’ve been doing ever since they started selling them.
After six years of selling ereaders you would think they would get things right eventually, but that still remains to be seen.
The mystery of the out-of-stock Kobo Aura One continues to deepen.
Earlier this month I posted an article Why Has Kobo Stopped Selling the Kobo Aura One?
It seems like Kobo is going out of their way to deter sales of their new flagship ereader and now they’ve taken things to another level.
Now the product page on Kobo’s website for the Kobo Aura One says that it is out-of-stock until early 2017. They claim that “This eReader flew off the shelves”.
If that’s true, then why has it been in stock and available for immediate shipping from the Chapters.Indigo website for the past two months?
Once again Kobo makes no sense. Their official retail partner has had no problems keeping the Aura One in stock since it was released, and yet Kobo has barely had it for sale at all from their website since September, literally like one hour in the past month.
The most perplexing thing about this is that Kobo makes no mention of their retail partners having them in stock. You would think that they could put up a note saying to check with authorized retailers to buy one, but in typical Kobo fashion they would rather sell none at all.
Quite frankly I’m amazed that Kobo continues to remain in business considering how they choose to run their company and sell their ereaders.
It’s like they treat their business as a hobby. Strange.
It is truly amazing. If I was an investor I would be furious. The problem may be with buggy KA1 hardware that they need to fix but to miss the holiday season is suicidal.
This is a wonderful device. I am enjoying it so much. I haven’t had any battery problem with mine at all. I can’t believe they would be okay with missing the holiday season.
UK Argos as them still. Kobo make unique reader but do no market them like amazon do. Reminds me how Sony who made lovely readers but just refused to install backlighting.
I’ve owned Sony e-readers, Kindles, and a number of Kobos. The Kobo Aura One is the best so far. So, it is very puzzling why Kobo would not be making every effort to sell it particularly during the up-coming holiday season. Is this some sort of commercial suicide?
If I recall correctly the US isn’t Kobo’s largest market.
While there is nothing in their own ‘store’ pages pointing to it, they do have a retailers page:
https://us.kobobooks.com/pages/retailers
same for other localizations. (Canadian version)
https://ca.kobobooks.com/pages/retailers
The pointer in Japan ( Rakuten) has them. What does the red ‘R’ button stand for in front of Kobo’s name on their website? (Rhetorical).
If Kobo doesn’t have enough to go around why would they want to throw their brick and mortar partners under the bus? *THAT* would be commercial suicide. There is no USA partner so that become last priority for an scarce item. There is a Holiday Season outside of the USA.
The lack of a USA retailer predates the 2016 Aura roll out. With no major USA partner putting in orders then there is little likelihood Kobo allocated production to a major movement in that location. If there is any it is probably allocated to Chapters (and cross boarder bleed ).
P.S. if go to the Chapters site and look on the “check other stores” link there doesn’t seem to be much there.
Toronto vast majority of stores empty. Max count at any store 1.
Vancouver largely same results. Max count 1.
Calgary Lots of zeros. more stores had one than the two regions above. One store has 7.
Montreal Lots of zeroes . some scattered ones and one store with 3.
It doesn’t look like Chapters is sitting on some vast stockpile of inventory. Cannot sell what you don’t have.
Bigger issue this week for Kobo is their low end version is priced pretty close to the Paperwhite. (refurb version is actually lower.)
Hi Nathan, would you say that the Kobo Aura One is your new favorite ereader? Is there any other ereader that you like just as much or even better?
Yeah, it is my new favorite ereader because I really like the larger screen size, but the software still falls short at times. Like I still have to use a Kindle for PDFs because they are basically unusable on Kobo’s ereaders, which is a shame.
Thanks, Nathan. In that case, I think I’ll upgrade from Kindle Voyage to Kobo Aura One. I only read EPUBs and MOBIs, not PDFs. The ability to change the frontlight to a warm tone is so vital for me in my struggle with insomnia, and the 8-inch screen sounds awesome.
Thanks so much for your awesome, helpful reviews and consistently accurate information. You’re the best! 🙂
Nathan, have you tried KOReader for PDFs? It’s quite nice, if you manage to install it as an alternative reader app on the KA1.
I haven’t tried it yet because it seems kind of pointless to review something for a product that’s out of stock most places. I’ll start posting more about the Aura One when Kobo finally makes an effort to start selling them again.