My colleague Brad Stone just blogged about why he thinks Apple’s iPad won’t kill the Kindle from Amazon.com.
I disagree. Yes, the iPad comes with its limitations. There’s no camera, no SD card slot, no Adobe Flash technology. But when you look at iPad in comparison with other e-readers available today, it is now clearly the best device on the market for those who enjoy reading.
Content is changing, but the Kindle is not.
Although the Kindle made amazing headway in the digital book market, helping push the boundaries on digital reading devices and the acceptance of these technologies, the iPad is a tectonic shift to the e-reader and e-book marketplace.
If you look at the way many of us consume content online, it’s shifting from just reading words to consuming multimedia. We view images, watch videos and add our own commentary to the content we ingest.
Take nytimes.com, for example — the front page is embedded with headlines that continually update, slide shows, user comments, links to other sources, and rich video and documentary-style news reporting.
The limitations of the Kindle don’t offer any of these new storytelling methods, and the device will suffer accordingly. I’m not suggesting we add videos to our books, but I do believe a device that doesn’t offer multiple types of content can reach only a small, segmented market.
The Kindle’s technology isn’t evolving fast enough.
Yes, it’s true that Amazon is hiring up to 46 developers for the Kindle on a career board, but the Kindle team will need to make some big leaps with the changes it makes to the device. The buttons on the keyboard are essentially a distraction while reading and a waste of space on a device that could shrink to the size of the current screen. The keyboard is also used so infrequently that Amazon should just add a touchscreen and eliminate it from the device.
Although I fully welcome a Kindle with color, especially using the Pixel Qi technology, it’s going to require a whole new operating system to take advantage of a full-color, fully interactive display.
What about the Kindle DX? This device currently costs $489. For an extra $10, you can purchase an iPad and browse the Web, watch movies, do some work in iWork and send e-mail. What does the Kindle DX offer? One or two
things from this feature list.
The Kindle is too expensive for a single-purpose device.
Amazon really has two roads it can choose now. One would be to completely redo the Kindle, adding more functionality, speeding it up, and integrating touch, color, a Web browser and a new user interface.
The second option would be to strip the device to its bare bones and drop the price as much as possible. A lot of people will have a hard time justifying $500 for the lowest entry-level iPad and would probably choose a $100 Kindle if they were hoping to find a new device to replace their paper-book reading.
One more thing …
Kindle’s store and its reading application for the iPhone are both excellent, simple experiences for purchasing and consuming books. Amazon understands this market better than anyone and could easily sell more books on the iPad than Apple could through its new iTunes bookstore. Amazon also offers an excellent recommendation system, and I can envision some users opting for the Kindle application on their fancy new iPads.