My coworker Steve Savitzky has some interesting musings on the Kindle, Amazon’s new ebook reader:
If you want everyone else’s opinion, see the links after the cut. Here’s mine: interesting play, but it’s in the wrong game.
You see, Kindle is Amazon’s attempt at an iPod for books. They’re using what they hope is an elegant, convenient, and reasonably-priced piece of hardware (which I’d guess that they’re selling at pretty close to cost when you factor in the pre-paid data plan) to sell digital copies of books (which are fairly expensive considering all the atoms they don’t have to handle compared with their dead-tree counterparts).
Apple, on the other hand, is using convenient access to an extensive collection of audio tracks (which they sell at pretty close to cost) to sell a particularly elegant and convenient, but overpriced, piece of hardware. Apple isn’t even in the hardware business, really: they understand that they’re in the fashion business, and have made it really easy for other companies to sell accessories for iPods.
Hands up, who’s going to build fashion accessories for the Kindle? Don’t all speak at once… How many people are going to buy a Kindle for each of their kids? Is anybody going to let their kids loose on a piece of hardware that lets them buy books at $10/pop at the click of a button? That’s what I thought.
Sounds pretty spot-on to me…