Comments on: High Hopes for the Amazon Kindle

By: Orawan

Orawan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:56:48 +0000

Nice Analyysis. I am very happy with my Kindle and look forward to many happy hours of reading. Thank you

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:38:48 +0000

Just finished my reply post. Woo!

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:35:22 +0000

Great points! I started writing out a novel of a reply, but just realized it might be better to make my reply into another post. This is a great topic to debate though!

By: Blog Kindle · Sunday Night Links #8: 25 May 2008

Blog Kindle · Sunday Night Links #8: 25 May 2008 — Sun, 25 May 2008 21:17:29 +0000

[...] High Hopes for the Amazon Kindle – BizThoughts [...]

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:39:36 +0000

I’ll give you that iTunes was important to the adoption of the iPod. But the bigger thing was that people were getting tired of carrying around personal stereo systems that could only hold 16 songs (a CD). These people spanned all demographics. If you had ever used a pair of headphones, then you were ripe for being an iPod user. The market was ripe for an easy-to-use MP3 player.

Tell me who those people are for Kindle? People who read books like books, not just the text. The divergence between book readers and technology couldn’t possibly be greater. People often read books to escape computers and technology. Plus, considering you can get great books for under $10 nearly anywhere, what would you do? Buy a $400 machine to output text, or buy 40 books? I love tech as much as the next computer geek, but even I would go for the latter.

Right now I see Kindle, and all e-book readers, as a product without a demand. No product can be successful if only early adopters are interested.

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:19:07 +0000

The Kindle isn’t the first e-book reader on the market though. Here’s a list of e-book readers & competitors, organized by type and year released:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers

And here’s a good comparison of all the current e-book readers on the market:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

I suspect iTunes had a large part in the success of iPod – having an MP3 player is useless unless there’s an easy way to get more MP3s. iTunes made it crazy simple to get new content for the iPod.

With Amazon’s brand & reach, I’m guessing their Kindle Store will have the same power as iTunes. Except that it’s even crazy simpler – you don’t need a computer, you can get more e-books on the Kindle in just a few minutes. That makes it easy for non-techies to use it too.

And hey, that’s another good reason. I oughta add that to my post.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:30:53 +0000

Two words: Zip drive. Just because someone is a first mover with a great product doesn’t mean that the product will succeed. My concern with Kindle is that it may be one of those toys that early adopters buy, use for a month, and then disgard. The iPod was successful largely because people wanted to replace their large portable CD players with something that could play more…it wasn’t techies that make the iPod the sensation that it was, it was the non-techies. Even my mom wants an iPod, but when she wants to read, she want a book. There’s something about the tactile relationship between readers and their material that makes it hard to give up. I remember when people predicted that newspapers would go out of circulation when people could get their news online…

Amazon’s other new services, though, interest me much more. S3 is a great idea that’s already creating all kinds of spinoff services based on it. Essentially, these developers are doing all of the marketing of S3 for Amazon.

By: BJ

BJ — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:40:32 +0000

Nice analysis! I’ve seen the Sony Reader and was impressed by it. Haven’t seen the Amazon Kndle yet but will have to check it out soon. Good luck on your investment!!