You couldn’t miss Amazon.com’s new Kindle device if you visited their site today. It was the main attraction. Kindle, Amazon’s own e-book (a mobile computer specifically designed for reading digitized books) is being set up in direct competition to Sony’s e-book “Portable Reader System”. Both utilize the new e-ink display technology, which draws virtually no power when on, except when the screen refreshes.

Sony has been working on their product for years and years now. It’s only recently that the newest version (2.0) has gotten good enough to really garner the interest of the greater consumer electronics world. Even with the fabulous industrial design that Sony brings to their e-book, and even with years of testing the waters of the market, estimates on product sales are in the thousands of units.

Why hasn’t the market been more welcoming? Perhaps it’s a simple matter of solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Americans don’t read on the go much; if it’s digital, it’s on a PDA. Japanese read manga and novelettes on their cell phones. Why own another device to carry around (after all, you could just bring a book)?

Or maybe it’s the price. At close to USD$300, a Sony e-book is a substantial investment. You can buy a good stack of books for that money.

Or maybe it’s a straightforward case of user experience: reading is (mostly) pleasure and relaxation. Otherwise, you’d be online researching something. A computer just doesn’t have the feel of a book in the hand, just doesn’t feel the same to the eye, just doesn’t feel… like a book.

Why does Amazon think they can do better in this market-that-might-not-be-a-market?

Let’s be blunt: they’re not going to succeed on product design. Kindle is the most incredibly awful looking product I’ve seen in years. It looks like a cross between a Motorola Q and a pack of dental floss. It doesn’t hold a kindle candle to the Sony’s elegance.

Telecoms.com offers a reasonable answer: it’s about the business model. Whereas Sony makes their money on hardware (yes, I know that the hardware manufacturers are moving into online content sales), Amazon makes their money selling content. Take a look at the Telecoms.com link. It’s an interesting premise.

What should strike you most is the offer of free data. The cost of the cellular connection is included in the cost of the device. What a concept! Most countries are still struggling to bring flat-rate data to the masses; Amazon is upping the ante to no-rate data.

Might this be more than just another e-book? Might this herald the future of the always-on, always open network?

Update [Nov.  26, 2007]: In follow-up to the points made by Telecoms.com, it’s worth noting a comment left on Robert Scoble’s blog:

56. One thing about the Kindle introduction that sticks out to me-Bezos saying this isn’t a device, its a “Service”.

I’m guessing the 1.0 hardware is just something they had to do to get things started-but they must have a bigger strategy here. I’m wondering if Apple is going to release:

a) an update to the iPhone that can access the Kindle “Service”

b) a Tablet Mac that can access the Kindle “Service”

(Steven Levy even dropped a hint about something in his Newsweek column-”(I’ve been reading Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” on my iPhone, a device that is expected to be a major outlet for e-books in the coming months.)” )

Comment by Totoro — November 25, 2007 @ 8:13pm