Borders set to take on Amazon

By Tim Clodfelter
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Published: May 29, 2008

On Tuesday, Borders started a new Web site. It hopes it will be able to compete with Amazon.com.
Borders.com offers free shipping in the continental United States for orders over $25, similar to an offer on Amazon. But you can also shop online and have your purchases shipped to any Borders or Waldenbooks store for free, or reserve items that are in stores and pick them up.
For the past seven years, Borders has redirected online customers to Amazon as a partner site.

Eight months after Sony’s Rolly Sound Entertainment Player was introduced in Japan, it has come to the United States. The device, which is the size and shape of a large egg, rolls, spins, dances and flashes colored lights to the music it is playing.
It comes loaded with choreography for three songs—Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend,“ Earth Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” and the classical music piece “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (also called “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”), best known as the theme song to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Users can also create their own choreography using software included with the device.
The two-gigabyte player sells for about $400. It’s available at Sony’s online Web site, http://www.sonystyle.com, and comes in white or black.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 27—often refered to as “Millennials”—have a big influence on their family’s media purchases, according to a new study by Motorola.
The study, reported by Home Media Magazine, found that 71 percent of Millennials had influence over their parents’ buying decisions for cable, DSL and satellite services; 62 percent had influence over their parents’ HDTV purchases; 84 percent want their movies on-demand; and 83 percent want to be able to take downloaded content from a DVR and play it on mobile devices.

Microsoft says it isn’t concerned about GameStop’s decision to stop selling its Zune media player.
GameStop announced recently that it was dropping the Zune, Microsoft’s rival to the iPod, because of weak sales and low demand. But it will continue selling the device online until its inventory runs out.
A spokesman for Microsoft told tech news site TheStreet.com that Microsoft still has a strong presence at such retail stores as Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart, adding, “We will continue to invest in deep retail partnerships, and have seen good momentum online and at retail over the last few months, including a great response to our recent spring update.“ In the first quarter of 2008, Zune sales accounted for only 4 percent of U.S. portable music player sales, compared with 71 percent for the iPod.