Amazon's new Kindle dubbed the 'iPod of reading'
Online retailer Amazon grabbed the spotlight on Monday when it announced the Kindle, a handheld e-book reader it says should do for digital text what Apple's iPod has done for music.
Amazon hopes that it can break e-book reading out of its niche by integrating unique hardware with a special online service, similar to the teamwork shown between the iPod and the iTunes Store.
Key to the integration is the device's built-in, pervasive Internet access and a special section of Amazon's online store dedicated to digital publications. Instead of using short-range Wi-Fi, the Kindle taps into Sprint's much larger 3G cellular network and uses this primarily to load its content on to the device: although it has an SD card slot and a USB cable, Amazon expects most users to download their reading material online, regardless of where they may be.
Titled Whispernet, the Amazon's access is completely free to use: owners are only charged for what they buy, not for the bandwidth used. Most of this buying will be done through Amazon's own digital bookstore, the company says.
Echoing part of Apple's approach to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, the Kindle can buy text online without requiring a computer. It also offers more than just individual book downloads and lets users subscribe to magazines and newspapers that are automatically downloaded shortly after the print version is published.
Costs range from $1.25 per month for some magazines to $10 for a typical book and $15 for a subscription to an international paper such as Le Monde.
And like the iPod touch, the Kindle can also browse the web: while RSS feeds of certain blogs are available in a Kindle-ready format for one to two dollars each per month, the reader also includes a basic web browser and quick access to Wikipedia.
The handheld even has its own e-mail address to receive web pages, Word files, and images as attachments for ten cents each.
No matter how attractive the product, however, Amazon's Kindle launch may have unintentionally mirrored the climate surrounding the 2001 introduction of the iPod. Like the Apple jukebox, the Kindle is launching at $399 into a market which has yet to fully embrace the product category. Still, Amazon -- which based its core business on selling books as far back as 1994 -- hopes it can make e-book readers as common place as digital media players are today.
The retailer said it plans to begin shipping Kindle on Wednesday.
Amazon hopes that it can break e-book reading out of its niche by integrating unique hardware with a special online service, similar to the teamwork shown between the iPod and the iTunes Store.
Key to the integration is the device's built-in, pervasive Internet access and a special section of Amazon's online store dedicated to digital publications. Instead of using short-range Wi-Fi, the Kindle taps into Sprint's much larger 3G cellular network and uses this primarily to load its content on to the device: although it has an SD card slot and a USB cable, Amazon expects most users to download their reading material online, regardless of where they may be.
Titled Whispernet, the Amazon's access is completely free to use: owners are only charged for what they buy, not for the bandwidth used. Most of this buying will be done through Amazon's own digital bookstore, the company says.
Echoing part of Apple's approach to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, the Kindle can buy text online without requiring a computer. It also offers more than just individual book downloads and lets users subscribe to magazines and newspapers that are automatically downloaded shortly after the print version is published.
Costs range from $1.25 per month for some magazines to $10 for a typical book and $15 for a subscription to an international paper such as Le Monde.
And like the iPod touch, the Kindle can also browse the web: while RSS feeds of certain blogs are available in a Kindle-ready format for one to two dollars each per month, the reader also includes a basic web browser and quick access to Wikipedia.
The handheld even has its own e-mail address to receive web pages, Word files, and images as attachments for ten cents each.
No matter how attractive the product, however, Amazon's Kindle launch may have unintentionally mirrored the climate surrounding the 2001 introduction of the iPod. Like the Apple jukebox, the Kindle is launching at $399 into a market which has yet to fully embrace the product category. Still, Amazon -- which based its core business on selling books as far back as 1994 -- hopes it can make e-book readers as common place as digital media players are today.
The retailer said it plans to begin shipping Kindle on Wednesday.
Comments
Who the heck cares about Jeff Bezos and what amounts essentially to a revamped e-reader? Talk about overhyping a product. This dorky, unwieldy implementation is going nowhere. If anyone can tap the potential market for digitized books (which so far doesn't even exist) then it's Apple with its prospective sexy tablet computer.
This is quite an embarrassing prognostication from Newsweek.
Who the heck cares about Jeff Bezos and what amounts essentially to a revamped e-reader? Talk about overhyping a product. This dorky, unwieldy implementation is going nowhere. If anyone can tap the potential market for digitized books (which so far doesn't even exist) then it's Apple with its prospective sexy tablet computer.
Just view Kindle as you viewed the first iPod. Big, unwieldy, expensive... uh, and very white. As a 1.0 product for Amazon, this ain't bad, but it is too expensive for most. Imagine the possibilities in the next couple of years, though. Google, Apple, and others might want to get into the new subscriber sustained wireless/cellular distributed e-publishing market once it gains a firmer toehold.
-horrible design
-too expensive (how many books to recoup?)
-bad reading experience
Reading for pleasure is a very intimate thing to do, even more then listening to music on your headphones, nobody wants to read from this "machine".
Now if you have to read tech stuff or legal stuff or study... you might aswel do it on your laptop, like people do now anyway.
Can't imagine curling up on the couch reading my ebook or whatever.
Sounds like a great product with no market and way first generation...no color. So, you can view photos in black and white...oh so seventies.
Doesn't work for me or anyone I know.
Thanks anyway.
Now, books on tape or digital format, which can be played on an iPod do make travel much easier.
Wow.... something else to throw in the drawer of bad technology ideas.
Look ma, it's the iPod of the cooking world...
Look, it's the iPod of the automotive world...
Look, it's the...
You get the drift...
Ideas like this have failed sooo sooo many times. Time to make sure all my Amazon stock is cleared out of the portfolio. What a waste of $ for R&D and thousands of man hours.
Simply put, invoking the iPod does not mean it's an iPod. When it is on every christmas list in America and you find yourself buying your third or even fourth engraved iPod.. THEN it's an iPod.
The one thing that is nice is the MP3 player. That is good for reading.
But what of the resolution? A lot of the books I read for class have images and diagrams, many of which are in color. How does this work for that, even in B&W?
Just view Kindle as you viewed the first iPod. Big, unwieldy, expensive... uh, and very white. As a 1.0 product for Amazon, this ain't bad, but it is too expensive for most. Imagine the possibilities in the next couple of years, though. Google, Apple, and others might want to get into the new subscriber sustained wireless/cellular distributed e-publishing market once it gains a firmer toehold.
I agree with your comments but I see many glaring flaws with Kindle. Despite that, I would like Apple to release a dedicated eReader for the iPhone/iPod Touch and any sub-compact it may release. As well as, sell eBooks through iTunes. If Kindle takes off perhaps this will happen. If it does, the iPod touch may be a big hit with Medical practitioners as medical records, encyclopedias and journals. Especially if t had find-as-you-type lookups.
They've already invented the iPod of reading. It's called a book. Nobody needs to carry around all their books--it's just not like music. It's a fundamentally bad idea.
There are plenty of reasons that a mobile reference would be quite beneficial.
While I know that at some point, every organization has to launch something that they've been pouring cash into, They should have taken a page from Jobs' playbook and either waited, partnered or killed it.
The "problem" is not that there hasn't been dedicated hardware up to this point, it's that publishers can't get their minds around how to package and distribute media, while still making a profit, now that the game has changed.
Why not partner with another company (Apple, Dell, etc.) to get a high res screen and whatever other necessary items incorporated into a sub compact? If it really catches on, then Amazon could utilize the distribution scheme to entice other makers. Let's be honest, why would anyone want to carry this AND a compact laptop that could do much more.
The sweet spot between "lightweight & portable" and "well built & durable" in devices like this size is really tough to find if there even is one, and that balance is different for every user. I think that this is one of those devices that will be obsolete 2 years from now, as computer makers incorporate higher res screens in tablets and compacts that can rival on price, and kill on features.
They've already invented the iPod of reading. It's called a book. Nobody needs to carry around all their books.
LOL. Brilliant.
There are plenty of reasons that a mobile reference would be quite beneficial.
Sure, with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and such. But those can be accessed/read on a laptop as well. Moreover, if you are already online as this device is, why not just google (or whatever) the reference info you need?
Why not partner with another company (Apple, Dell, etc.) to get a high res screen and whatever other necessary items incorporated into a sub compact?
A high-res screen would be a huge drain on the battery. The screen they chose allows for 30 hours of operation with less than a 2 hour charge. While I wish they offered something with colour that had a backlight option, I think they may have made the right choice for their target market, which is heavy readers of text-only books that are sitting in well lit areas.
Sure, with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and such. But those can be accessed/read on a laptop as well. Moreover, if you are already online as this device is, why not just google (or whatever) the reference info you need?
I've got the whole of wikipedia downloaded to my PDA (minus images)... That works pretty well.
I've got the whole of wikipedia downloaded to my PDA (minus images)... That works pretty well.
???
why would you download a constantly changing source? You should have gone with another encyclopedia thats more constant. Also, thats 2,096,558 articles in English, and that seems a bit wasteful to me even if each article take up almost no space.
???
why would you download a constantly changing source? You should have gone with another encyclopedia thats more constant. Also, thats 2,096,558 articles in English, and that seems a bit wasteful to me even if each article take up almost no space.
I suspect two reasons for Having a hardcopy of Wikipedia. He is often not near a decent internet source and he wants something more robust than the typical circumscribed topics found in most other encyclopedias.
I have an iRex illiad. The reading experience with e-ink is EXCELLENT.
I took it with me on vacation and loaded up hundreds of books on it.
I was able to read in the airport, on the plane and in my hotel room-no lugging around a suitcase full of books.
Why have a collection of books on a device? Because YOU CAN. Have the books you read for pleasure. Have the technical books for your profession. Have the daily newspaper, wikipedia and google at your fingertips.
In a form factor suited for reading with ease.
All the scifi books I could read...it was a very pleasurable and engaging reading experience, with text files.
What was missing? Apple's multitouch interface. The iRex UI is awful in terms of the resizing controls and such. Page turning is fine, it is the basic details which Apple always pays attention to that are missing.
PDF scaling UI is weak, which is why Apple with an OSX implementation of this would rule.
The market for getting your newspapers and magazines is a good one.
The market for replacing heavy school textbooks is enormous if the price is right.
From the looks of the Kindle, Apple can still enter this market and dominate. They already have all the other technology pieces including the UI done. They have the iTunes infrastructure in place. And they know both wifi and telephony (from the iPhone). They also have experience with power management and battery life. The only missing piece is an e-ink based device, running the iPod Touch UI with preview and textedit. A dictionary. Safari browser. Boom.
Apple would OWN this marketplace when they decide to enter it. All the technology for it is off the shelf for them now.
A high-res screen would be a huge drain on the battery. The screen they chose allows for 30 hours of operation with less than a 2 hour charge. While I wish they offered something with colour that had a backlight option, I think they may have made the right choice for their target market, which is heavy readers of text-only books that are sitting in well lit areas.
As far as the screen goes, I think that's really the only compelling thing about it. Using a digital paper display, so it actually seems like you're reading a book actually makes sense. I think it looks pretty ugly, and has way too many buttons, but it's kind of interesting.
I have a feeling that if I bought one I'd think it was pretty cool for about 2 weeks then it would wind up in a drawer.
Putting an eInk screen on an ereader (okay, the E is getting a little overloaded) is essential to making a device like this succeed, because it's actually *comfortable* to read for extended periods of time. To all the people who say they'd rather have a laptop that can do so much more, how long can you read that laptop screen before you want to gouge your eyes out? Yes, reading for pleasure *is* an intimate experience, and an eInk screen actually allows it to remain so on an electronic device. I cannot read a computer screen nearly comfortably enough to get the bookish experience, but I can an eInk screen.
I'm still not going to get one. It's very first-gen, and I don't like that it's (essentially) locked into Amazon purchases and EVDO. But unless this is a complete failure, second gen will come, just as it did with the iPod, and it'll probably fix a lot of the flaws. Don't liquidate that Amazon stock just yet.