Amazon’s Kindle is Doomed
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | November 20, 2007 | Share This
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Amazon’s new e-reader, Kindle, was unveiled yesterday, and by most accounts, the $400 device is too expensive, ugly, and just doesn’t make a lot of sense, particularly the monthly blog-subscription model. Reviews of Kindle aren’t terrible but because the tech blogosphere is made up largely of early adopters and not many of them seem into it, it’s likely a doomed effort. Even Kindle’s pseudo-Wi-Fi misses the mark, but perhaps that’s emblematic of the entire concept; Mathew Ingram puts it best:
The wireless also isn’t Wi-Fi, but a specially configured version of EVDO, so you can’t do all kinds of things with it. In other words, the wireless connection is sort of crippled, just as a whole series of other things about the device are crippled — and that would include the inability to put certain kinds of content on there because of the proprietary or restricted formats that Amazon is using.
Damon Darlin argues that Amazon ought to market Kindle to college students:
They buy dozens of books each term and can easily read 40 books in a year. The thing would start saving them money within a year. (And they would have less weight to lug around in the meantime. That has to be worth something.)
But it’s not just the volume of books read, but the cost of those books. The college textbook market would be a great segment for the Kindle to break into because textbooks cost so much. The average student pays $900 per year on course materials. Almost every student — and parent — feels ripped off paying for those books.
It’s the people who feel ripped off who will build the critical mass necessary for an e-book market.
Even if textbook publishers were to cooperate with such an idea, $400 is an awfully large investment for a college student to make for such a limited device, especially when you consider that e-books being sold on Amazon aren’t significantly cheaper than their paper counterparts, that college students are really good at scouring the web for cheap textbooks, and that for $400 any college student can get an iPhone, which lets them do a lot more. Fred Wilson, who was approached to include his blog for subscription via Kindle, wrote, “eBook readers are stupid. The iPhone and Blackberry and services like DailyLit that deliver books via email and RSS to any device are the way to go.” Kindle, unless Amazon changes its pricing and functionality, is probably dead on arrival (and it’s interesting to note that Brad Stone’s post about a hypothetical Kindle 2.0 basically describes an iPod Touch).
Topics: Technology, Wireless & Mobile |
I disagree. Amazon will be pushing the Kindle very hard since their founder very much believes in this device. Moreover, Amazon is selling most of the books on the best seller list at around $10 dollars, so if you usually buy a $30 book every month, you’ll break even in a year and half. The Kindle isn’t supposed to be another Swiss electronic pocket knife. It’s supposed to emulate and improve upon books. And from other reviewers, the Kindle does a very good job.
I am sick of everybody comparing this to an Iphone. If people want a phone they will buy a phone. The purpose of this is to fit an entire library of Novels or books into a small device that you can read just as easily. If this STILL doesn’t make sense then YOU are the idiot.
I think it is still too expensive. And not being able to read PDFs on it is a problem.
More people will read on devices they buy to do other things (like iPhones, Touches - which hopefully will get readers in Feb, Treos, etc).
The problem with textbooks on the Kindle is it is in black and white and many have color graphs and photos.
I imagine this will also be a drawback for some other books, blogs, and web surfing (Andy Ihnatko writes on twitter, “A simple but usable web browser is built in. The ‘pay’ blogs are specially formatted and download full-text automatically”).
Seems like calling it a failure before you even try it is beyond just short-sighted.
It’s ugly, it has limitations, but is it good at what it’s supposed to do?
I don’t know yet, and if you didn’t try one yet then neither do you.
The way I figure it if nothing else the reading experience ought to be quite a bit better than I get on my Palm T|X, and the web access would have to be horrible to not work better than on my LG Chocolate.
I love paper too, but I still read tons of e-books on my PDA … I always have it with me, and it has a library of about 100 books on it right now. I don’t need to buy cheap paperbacks in the middle of airplane trips anymore. And that’s not even why I bought the device….
Everyone decries the death of paper and the cost of the device but I notice the large number of people reading “newspapers” on the web. I don’t know about you, but I find the LCD reading experience sub-optimal even on the huge PC display … and I can’t read it on the train.
I don’t think this particular device is going to burn down the paper publishing industry, but it looks to me like the best effort yet in the e-book arena by a rather large margin. The wireless integration with the Amazon bookstore makes it vastly easier to buy and load books; it’s much easier to use than the others I’ve seen; and e-ink beats the pants off of LCD viewer technologies in both readability and battery life.
This is one of those things, I think, that you can’t really knock until you try. I put my money where my mouth is and bought one; in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to tell you whether or not it’s a success.
At this point Amazon has fired a shot that looks like it’s not a direct hit, but which is probably close enough to define the basic characteristics of electronic publishing for the next few decades.
Thank you for your comments.
Todd - point taken on the cheaper bestsellers.
Thomas - The comparison is being made because relatively speaking, the iPhone (or for argument’s sake, the iPod Touch) gives users a lot more value for the same price. Most people would rather consolidate devices at this point than add another thing to the backpack/briefcase/purse/back pocket.
Steve - very good point about the textbook graphics and limitations there; I was an English major so didn’t have that problem but my pre-med friends certainly would have. Though trying to write a paper with just one book open at a time would have been impossible, and my understanding is that’s a Kindle limitation, as well.
Jim - I’d be thrilled to try this… if it didn’t cost $400. That’s simply too high a price for point of entry for something I might very well hate.
Make it for college students!! I am a college student. I pay nearly $1000 per semester on books,a $400 one-time fee and $10-$20 per title would be a welcomed relief to all college campuses around the country.
I don’t know what kind of selections can be purchased currently, but I’m willing to bet my Constitutional Law (1370 pages) or Civil Procedure (840 pages) are not available.
As a law school student, I literally own at least 3 books for each of my 6 classes and each book is at least 5 pounds.
Please, please someone make a product like this that will free college students from the shackles of heavy, thick books that need to be carried across college campuses! We might even use it to read for enjoyment…