“The competition” is probably primarily Amazon Kindle (without a colour model, nor any repairability announced yet). Certainly, consumers score with repairability, and on the face of it, you’d think suppliers lose out. But actually, I may be inclined to buy a far more expensive model if I know I can repair it and keep it going for a few years.
Though I should add after many years of owning a Kobo reader and a few Kindles, not one of them has had any issue at all, and all still work fine. But I get that some people do drop their devices, or things can die after the initial warranty period.
Kobos are now available I see for purchase on Amazon (yes really, just not to my country) as well as Walmart.
Kobos are excellent readers actually and the only thing that counts a bit against them, is they don’t have that vast availability of books that Amazon has. But the Calibre app works perfectly well with being able to buy books elsewhere and push them to your Kobo reader.
See https://www.androidpolice.com/kobos-reparability-push-sounds-interesting/