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Aug
13
The media buzz on the Amazon Kindle continues at mid-week, following a Citigroup analyst’s positive estimates of 2008 Kindle sales on Monday.
The Top Stocks Blog over at MSN Money staked out somewhat of a contrarian position. Under the headline, “Amazon’s Kindle unlikely to set world on fire,” the blogger noted that although some think the Kindle will have a first-year sales record comparable to that of the Apple iPod, “[o]thers believe it’s wishful thinking to assume John Grisham will ever be as popular as Jay-Z.”
After noting some features of the Amazon Kindle — ability to download books over the wireless Whispernet network, the glare-free screen and enlargeable screen fonts, the Top Stocks blogger held firm to the notion of print-and-paper books: “Doodling in the corners and turning the pages into a flipbook, alas, can still only be done in regular books.”
The Register in the UK, on the other hand, offered a different take on the prospects for the Amazon Kindle and for paper books. Under the headline “Amazon Kindle set to go massive,” the subheading is “Print not dead, but tombstone prepared.”
The Register described the Kindle as “much more than an electronic book. Always connected over its whispernet network . . . it heralds a new way of using wireless networks, and puts a great deal of power into the hands of the device manager (Amazon in Kindle’s case).”
The article also paid some attention attention to the Sony Reader, noting that the Sony ebook reading device will be available at Waterstones bookstores in the UK in September. “Putting the Reader into shops makes a lot of sense,” the article said, “as it’s impossible to convey the quality of the electronic-ink screens used on e-books, and many people change their opinion of the idea on seeing one with their own eyes.”
An article over at Ad Lab noted the reports on the Citigroup predictions for Kindle sales. “If true, it’s a good news for Amazon, but also an important development for the publishing industry, and by extention, the ad biz.” The writer, however, expressed disappointment in the first generation of the Amazon Kindle device:
While Kindle looks much better in person than on pictures and has a few nifty things going for it — the built-in net connectivity that you don’t have to configure, for example — its many usability peculiarities make it hard to love. I could never get used to the back button which is like clicking “back” while looking at a Flash object in a web browser, and I couldn’t understand why you need two differently functioning buttons for “Back” and “Last page”. Getting your own files onto the device requires too high of a learning curve and I’m not sure if it supports other languages.
The writer saw promise in the launch of the rollable screen Readius ereader device.
At the New York Times’ Bits technology blog, writer Saul Hansell suggests in the aftermath of the Citigroup reports that there are a couple of things to be learned from the Kindle’s success:
First you can’t underestimate the miracle that happens when you make something really easy for people. Easy means fast, better than the old way and with very few annoying disappointments and delays. The Kindle device is a better way to carry lots of books (at least for some). Shopping is easy, with very few steps. And Amazon’s relationship with publishers has created a very broad library of Kindle books. Sure, there are lots of books you can’t buy for it, but the disappointment factor is low.
The second lesson is, to quote a cliché, it takes all kinds. Steve Jobs dismissed the e-book market because “people don’t read anymore.” That may be true broadly, but there could well be a $1 billion business for Amazon serving the tiny share of people who read a lot.
Related Post:
Amazon Kindle Sales Surpassing Expectations?
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