Out of print: The new Kindle is less than a centimeter thick, weighs 300 grams, and turns pages 20 percent faster than its predecessor. The e-ink technology powering its screen is also a newer generation, displaying sixteen shades of gray rather than four.
Amazon
The device betrays a plan to dominate the transition from printed books to electronic ones.
At a press conference held at the Morgan Library in New York City this morning, Amazon announced a new version of its Kindle electronic reading device. While the new device offers important improvements over the original Kindle, it is most significant as a sign of Amazon's ambitions to dominate the transition from printed books to electronic ones.
The Kindle 2's biggest new feature is text to speech, powered by software from Nuance. The device can read a book aloud to a user, and is designed to make it easy to switch between reading and listening. At Monday's launch event, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, demonstrated this technology by having the Kindle read from the Gettysburg Address. The device betrayed the stilted speech that is characteristic of most text-to-speech software, but nonetheless pronounced the words clearly and accurately.
Most of the other changes to the Kindle are improvements designed to further its ability to "disappear" while the user is reading, as Bezos put it. At just under a centimeter thick, the device is smaller; is, at 300 grams, slightly lighter than the previous version; and turns pages 20 percent faster, Bezos said. The e-ink technology powering its screen is also a newer generation, displaying sixteen shades of gray rather than four. And the Kindle 2 has enough storage space for 1,500 books instead of just a few hundred. The Kindle 2 will sell for $359 and, as with the first Kindle, will come with free wireless access to Amazon's store.
While these updates may be welcomed by prospective users, the Kindle 2 is most significant as part of a strategy that Amazon is developing to deal with the anticipated shift away from the printed word.
Amid signs that the market for electronic books is finally gaining momentum, Amazon could face stiff competition not only from other electronic reading devices, such as Sony's e-Reader, but also from increasingly capable smart phones and other portable Internet devices.
For example, last week, Google announced that it had reformatted more than 1.5 million books for reading on iPhones and Android phones. Although Google's offering currently consists of only public-domain books, Frances Haugen, product manager for Google Book Search, says that the company intends to work with partners to offer new books as well.
The new generation of e-book reading gadgets will transform the troubled book, magazine, and newspaper industries. But it's uncertain what that transformation will look like.
dmm, you hit the nail on the head with the textbook observation. I wonder if Jeff can pull it off....
but how does this betray the plans for ebooks? anyways im still waiting on the colored eink kindle.
what about a subscription based model
I feel there will be a paradigm shift if the model evolved from a purchase-based to a monthly subscription model, and like a mobile phone, perhaps they could give the device free if I buy a 24 month subscription. This should take care of the initial cost of ownership and introduce newer segments to the device.
Why do I need to pay for a book to own it forever when I might only read it once?
- Ajeetha
Make a version for schools that has less memory and all the current text books available not just general reading books and it will take off. Lots of things start in the education world where students get used to it and carry it with them the rest of their lives.
Look at the current Gen Y, I may have been an X'er growing up with early computers, but Gen Y's have never known life w/o the Internet and iPods. While there are pros and cons to that they will always use the net. If the kindle were just as indispensable because it's something they'd grown up with Amazon could grow a new base of users every single school year. The habits will become routine and the paper page will give way to eInk "pages".
I'd like to see every student with a kindle, the current encyclopedia (cause Wikipedia has many issues) and other such reference libraries in one smal device instead of two backpacks of A-Day and B-Day books each weighing at least 30-50lbs (each day has 4 blocks, AB Block scheduling and it works very well). In addition to that Amazon will offer schools fully subsidized contracts with the schools paying Amazon for batteries (a #1 consumable) and any repairs. Amazon could collect tons of user feedback, reliability data and user habits to which they can build better Kindles and marketing practices.
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dmm
270 Comments
Getting nicer and nicer, BUT:
1) It is still about $400 US. Sorry, but that's a lot of money! Either it has to offer me something I desperately want, or else it has to save me money in the long run. It COULD (in principle) do both of these, but not as currently marketed.
2) The books for it are still way too expensive. Best-sellers for $10? You can get them used (but in good condition) for $5 (including S&H) through various Amazon associates. Or even less from a local used-book store. Or nearly free at a yard sale. Or totally free if your friend gives/lends it to you. Or totally free from a library. Amazon MUST either implement some system of transferring digital rights, or make owning the e-books so cheap that people don't care about transferring ownership, or lease e-books (like a library, but you pay to borrow). Better yet, all three ideas, and more.
3) The selection is still WAY WAY too limited. Best sellers are ALREADY available cheaply from a variety of sources, so they don't really count. Where are the textbooks and technical books (at greatly reduced prices -- see above)? If most textbooks were available as e-books at half-price (or even 3/4 price), students would jump at the Kindle, because it would save both their wallets and their backs.
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mkogrady
425 Comments
Re: Getting nicer and nicer, BUT:
Excellent point - text books should be distributed this way or in PDF format to reduce costs. How many times do we have to pay for Pythagorean theorem - it's over 2000 years old and we keep having to shell out new bucks to learn it in school?
Don't forget that books are printed on paper, which represents a loss of carbon sinks and speed up global warming. Save the trees, buy a Kindle!
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ChipCorrera
1 Comment
Re: Getting nicer and nicer, BUT:
Nothing at the library is free - billions of tax dollars a year are spent and Universities do the same. The "free library" myth slows digital progress unecessarily - lets spend the money once on creation and share the knowledge.
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