Borders May Be Dead, But e-Reader Kobo Is Still Alive And Kicking
I am old enough to remember when going into a chain store like Borders and picking out books physically was something one did to save time. Plus, as any bookworm will tell you, rifling through bookstore shelves …
Context & Ripple Effects
The irony is sharp because Kobo built its early US presence through Borders: the cheap e-reader that landed in Borders stores in 2010 and the $150 device Silicon Alley Insider covered made the chain one of the startup's main storefronts. By late 2010 that anchor was already wobbling, with Borders stalling publisher payments and doubting its own survival in the e-book era.
Borders' shutdown of all 399 remaining stores and the layoff of 11,000 employees confirms what GigaOM questioned in mid-2010 when it asked whether Borders could unseat Amazon at all — the question resolved itself by elimination. Kobo, meanwhile, timed its latest E Ink reader for May 2011 to land a day before Barnes & Noble's Nook announcement, signaling it intends to fight the big two directly rather than retreat with its former retail partner.
First-order effects
- Kobo immediately loses its flagship US brick-and-mortar distribution channel as Borders' final 399 stores close and 11,000 staff exit, forcing the device maker onto online and international partners alone.
- Borders' publishers and landlords face an abrupt loss of their largest remaining physical bookstore customer, on top of the payment stalling documented in December 2010.
Second-order effects
- Barnes & Noble inherits the last large physical bookstore footprint in the segment, and its Nook line becomes the only mainstream e-reader still sold inside a national chain — a shelf-space advantage Amazon never needed but Kobo now lacks entirely.
- Publishers who already absorbed Borders' stalled payments must re-weight e-book distribution toward Amazon, Apple, and Google's nascent store, accelerating the shift of bargaining power to platform owners.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, e-reading consolidates around vertically integrated players — retailer-owned devices like Kindle and Nook — while independent device makers like Kobo survive only by selling hardware internationally and partnering with whoever owns shelf space or apps next.
- The collapse also hardens the lesson for media retail generally: owning content relationships matters more than owning storefronts, a template other categories from music to video have been testing.
The trend: E-book retail is consolidating around vertically integrated device-and-store ecosystems like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook, leaving hardware-only independents such as Kobo to compete on price and international reach as physical chains disappear.