Larger Kindle Rumored to Be Announced This Week
Amazon is enjoying what are touted to be good sales of the Kindle 2, and the rumor mill is going full speed that a new, larger Kindle is to be announced this week. The buzz surrounds a deal that Amazon has supposedly inked with The New York Times to provide a Kindle with a large screen for viewing periodicals like newspapers. I am afraid they may run into some harsh realities if they release such a beast.
The rumor was sparked by an invitation that some journalists have received for a press event:
We’d like to invite you to an Amazon.com press conference scheduled for Wednesday, May 6 at 10:30 am ET. The press conference is scheduled to take place at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, located at 3 Spruce Street, New York City. Doors will open for registration at 9:30 am ET.
This has desperation written all over it. A large Kindle is not going to stop the death-spiral that newspapers are firmly in the grasp of, no matter how cool. Who is going to carry such a large Kindle around with them? No one, and that’s a big hurdle to overcome. Couple that with the cost such a device would require, and it’s game over before the starting buzzer. The littler Kindle costs over $300; this one would possibly have to run a good $500, and who’s going to pay that to read their favorite newspaper they are already reading free online?
Check out today’s NYTimes for an article on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/technology/companies/04reader.html?adxnnl=1&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1241442011-M0vn2tXRdMwC3jLTZZ5/fA
ah, is that the new Kindle?
Who says a larger Kindle would have to be $500?
Maybe this is when we finally get a subsidized reader…say $149 with the purchase of certain subscriptions? I would buy a Kindle today if it could display a full newspaper correctly, including pics and layout.
Reading a newpaper or magazine on the current readers is no better than reading an RSS feed on the computer…
I completely agree.
Moreover and with all due respect, I think James is coming from a consumer perspective. There is a business market that would kill to tote their large documents on an e-Reader in addition to news content, but the smaller size is just not practical.
Amazon is not the only e-Reader manufacturer that is tuned into this. It’s not all about books and newspapers. It’s about the enormity of electronic reading.
You’re right, James, what they should be doing is
A) finding a way to come out with a less expensive Kindle, not a more expensive one and
B) making the existing one better..
Just my 2¢…
The thing that I am most surprised by when I read all the commentary on this device is the *extreme* negativity on this device. I have to admit it catches me by surprise. Normally gadgets gets everyone’s imagination going. But not this time.
Instead of wondering what it would be like, what kind of interesting scenarios it could play into. Maybe the oh-so-typical guessing game of features. But no, it’s all “it will be too expensive” “It won’t save them (insert big publishing name here)”.
It’s not just jkOnTheRun either. Everyone seems to have this attitude on this device.
I don’t know, maybe it will be a dud. But boy, count me as a skeptic of the skeptics.
James, I agree that charging more for a newspaper-oriented Kindle would be a mistake. However, I would be really surprised if that was the case. Newspaper execs may be a bunch of idiots, but Bezos is a smart guy. I really doubt he would greenlight a more expensive Kindle for what by all accounts is a dying industry. While its base price will definitely be higher, I think paid subscribers can expect a subsidized price for a newspaper-oriented Kindle. Furthermore, if this report from Silicon Alley Insider can be trusted, the major newspapers should be giving Kindles away for free.
How about touch like one Fuji has. I don’t care much for color just now…
James, I don’t share your negative opinion on this product. Amazon will probably offer it for a subsidized price to reduce the up front costs; also, this will be the perfect device for students willing to save on textbooks.
Everyone is looking at newspapers, but textbooks strike me as being a bigger market. Look at how much your average college or uni student spends each term on textbooks; Amazon are already raking it in through their paper-copy sales (and, quite probably, making a healthy amount creaming the top off of Marketplace sales), why not do the same with electronic versions?
It also puts the recent wireless document conversion price-rise into context (from $0.10 flat, to per-MB) – students will be more likely to load large files, papers, documents, lab-books etc. than your average reader.
From a guy that admits to having carried around a 30 pound “mobile” computer that’s a pretty strong statement.
From the tear downs of the Kindle 2 we know Amazon was thinking about adding a Personal Area Network technology but chickened out.
If they made a letter sized device with Bluetooth 3.0 and supported printing-to-it technology the device could have some serious legs.
Instead of hand/pocket carrying it, I expect people would have over the shoulder portfolio cases to transport the device in.
It would be far more portable than a 30 pound Compaq.
We geeky types always seem to have a bag with us so yes, we could throw this into our bag. “Regular” people I interact with don’t carry a bag however. The most they are willing to carry around with them is a paperback book, and only if it’s a good one they can’t put down. That’s the crowd that newspapers have to reach to find salvation and they are not the folks to carry a big slate around with them. That’s just my opinion, of course.
Re: the subsidy issue. It’s possible but Amazon doesn’t subsidize the Kindle 2 so why would they subsidize this one? That leaves the publications themselves, in this case the NYT to provide the subsidy or the “free” one as alluded to. Will anyone be willing to maintain a subscription to a given publication forever to keep that cheap device? We rail against the phone carriers for contracts, this is no different.
And if you cancel your contract for the publication what would happen to the device? Not as straightforward as it appears on the surface.
James, I think that you are off base on this one.
For my use, this is far better than the current Kindle (and worth the extra cash). “Mobile” for this device (for me) would be around the house, not around town. I am betting that this is true for lots of folks. Reviewers can be very myopic in their assessments!
I understand you perfectly and realize that we are all different in our wants and needs. We say that all the time here on jkOTR. That said, my opinion doesn’t change, many folks like you who only want to read the paper at home will just log onto their web site to do so. For free.
I’ve heard some say that the experience of reading the full paper is worth the extra money for the subscription and the device to read it on and I can appreciate that. What I don’t understand is why most folks have stopped reading the print paper if they feel that way. That’s what is hammering these media producers, people stopped subscribing to the paper. And they’d deliver it right to your door each day too.
You may be right — my tech prediction skills are abysmally poor. But these new devices appeal to me (this is probably a good early indicator that they will fail).
Perhaps one day we can get a hinged device with two screens.
A DS style e-reader. Then you could have the screens either show one large page for newspapers, or two regular book pages for novels.
I would sign up for that…
Very interesting debate going on here! While I do not and have never subscribed to a paper that gets delivered to my home, I have subscribed to the electronic edition of the NYT for a few years now and have been hoping a device just like this one would be released, right down to the subsidized price. IMO, a very thin, 8×10 sized e-ink reader is much more convenient than paper. Physical newspapers are cumbersome to carry around (too thick), to fold to focus in on the article you’re reading, to keep around if you haven’t gotten to the paper on a particular day but still want/need to read it, and then to recycle/dispose of. In addition to dealing with those issues, a device like this brings the other advantages of e-ink over LCD displays that we are all aware of (i.e., lack of eye strain). So for folks like me who value newspaper content, who enjoys reading the paper in its traditional format, and who despises reading newspaper websites, this could be a very compelling device.
I would also like add that much of the fall of the newspaper business is related to its quick and not fully thought-out embrace of technology in the form of giving away their valuable content for free on the web. This may just be an opportunity to use technology to help them stay in business. It is a step in the right direction of getting us to pay (at least for some) of the news content we rely on to stay informed citizens and to make informed decisions.
I think this is a very good idea and only hope the execution of it is as good.
One major contributor to the demise of the print paper- online editions get updated in near real-time. Check out the front page of the NYT site throughout the day and see how it keeps current. Print papers can’t do that and if they do launch an electronic reader for papers they’d better update in real-time too.
After thinking about this for a few hours, I think I would be interested in this new offering for use around the house… ie in my lazy boy. My needs for this include 1) satisfactory form factor, 2) subsidized cost, 3) need to be able to do crosswords and sudoko on it with excellent UI, 4) normal kindle book access (since this needs to supplement my k2).
Why would the new Kindle be significantly bigger than the current Kindle? There’s plenty of space on the current Kindle from which to increase the screen–remove the stupid keyboard in front, for starters.
What this is is a slate tablet for those who don’t want a tablet. For jkontherun posters and fanatics, they already have a tablet, so this is unnecessary. But for people who don’t have or don’t want a tablet for whatever reason (they want a screen larger than 12 inches, they own a Mac, they don’t want to pay more for a tablet, etc.) this would be great. I’m looking forward to this device.
Ok, so what do we think this thing is going to look like? Where’s the guessing game? This is a new gadget. But it’s not replacing an old gadget since the Kindle 2 is not old. So what will it have that makes you want to buy it while not sabotaging sales of the Kindle 2?
My take? Sprint EvDO for sure. No Bluetooth. No keyboard. Touch. Better web capability. Battery life lower because they expect it to be used daily and to be online more often. Possibly better music focus (Amazon music downloads). Here’s a thought.. What if it’s not e-Ink? I actually think it won’t be e-ink. Too much overlap with Kindle 2. Might be capacitive, but could just as easily be resistive. Color screen, yes, color. Very expensive, so they’ll use a subscription model to subsidize costs.
I’m just guessing blindly of course. But still… what say you?
Oh boy was I wrong. It literally is just a larger version of the Kindle 2. What a complete letdown.
Honestly, unless you have a dying need for native PDF support, absolutely require a larger screen, or thing that the vendor-limited text-to-speech feature is a necessity, I would suggest going out any buying a used Kindle 1. I had one, it was just as good as the the 2 or the 3.
You guys should also check out the front page of the print Wall Street Journal Marketplace Seciton this morning. It talks about publishers trying to nuture competition to the Kindle. One of the money quotes, which shows in my view that the print media just doesn’t get it is: “Some publishers regret not charging people for newspaper and magazine subscriptions on the Web. They believe mobile devices-whether it’s the iPhone or e-readers-are new enough that consumers won’t balk at paying for the digital content.”
Where is the India and China strategy from Amazon? When will they see a Kindle? Will Jeff Bezos start to think of India or China only after exploiting and completely exhausting the US and Europe markets?
These two countries are too important to be ignored – come up with a dead cheap Kindle, a large selection of good books, backed by a good service and I see no reason why folks in ‘developing’ countries would not buy! If Microsoft can do it with XBox and Sony with PS, why cant Amazon with Kindle?