Prince McLeanThe New York Times reported that Amazon assimilated multitouch screen maker Touchco into its Kindle engineering team last week; since then, it reports the Kindle group has posted over 50 job openings for positions related to hardware design.
Among the job postings is a Hardware Display Manager position, which asks that applicants "know the LCD business and key players in the market." Up to this point, Amazon has touted the Kindle's quirky e-ink screen as a major feature, promoting its readability and power savings that enable the device to coast for days without charging it.
If the next Kindle moves to conventional LCD screen technology, it will enable Amazon to keep up with the iPad in terms of displaying color, animation, and video. An LCD would also be required to support a touch interface, as e-ink isn't responsive enough to respond to touch gestures; the display lags even with the existing button controls.
Amazon's Kindle group is also looking for WiFi specialists, presumably to help move the product from being 3G-only (and tied to a bundled mobile plan) into a hybrid or even WiFi-only lineup. That might enable Amazon to lower the price for users who don't need to download books from anywhere, and who use their e-book reader within an area that already has WiFi service.
Other job postings support Amazon's recently unveiled Software Development Kit plans for Kindle, intended to create accessory applications for the product. Any apps will almost certainly require existing Kindle users to upgrade to new hardware, as the technical constraints of e-ink would greatly limit what kinds of useful apps developers could create.
Having to rebuild the Kindle from scratch in order to make it more competitive with the iPad as an e-reader would seem to be an expensive proposition for Amazon, particularly given the relatively minor sales it has achieved over the last two years. In developing an entirely new device, Amazon will also face competition from the conventional e-ink readers from Sony and Barns and Noble, leaving some analysts to speculate that the company will need to maintain an e-ink model.
The iPad splash
The announcement of Apple's iPad is having a similar impact on other company's products. For example, the iPad is forcing Acer to rethink what kind of tablet devices it could introduce for $500 in competition with Apple's existing iTunes infrastructure. Other netbook makers are also likely to feel the pinch once the similarly priced iPad hits consumers with new multitouch features, rich media playback on a larger screen, an iBooks shelf, and the ability to play large format games with rich interactivity.
Outside of consumer e-book readers and netbooks, the iPad is showing promise to replace custom devices in medicine and in education, two fields where tablet devices seemed to show promise but never really gained much traction.
The impact of the iPad on the plans of other manufacturers was foreshadowed by the iPhone, which entered the smartphone market at a time with everyone's offerings were dominated by mini-keyboards and small screens. Within a couple years, pundits changed their tune on how terrible the iPhone's virtual keyboard was and every manufacturer has since shifted its smartphone development to focus on large screen devices with touch interfaces in the shadow of the iPhone.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
163 Comments
I don't know... I think eInk is still a pretty big deal. Huge benefits. But everything has it's pros and cons.
Personally... I think that once colour eInk come out... it would be perfect for an outdoor handheld GPS. I used them a lot for backpacking and search and rescue and they all have two big problems... short battery life very difficult to read outdoors. But I can't imagine Garmin ever being innovative enough to think of using a PixelQi or eInk screen.
I bet. Want a Kindle cheap? Take a look at eBay in eight weeks or so.
Renting of books is coming to the iPad and future Kindles, this is why the buy price shift upwards to make room for another set of prices at Amazon (the iBookStore will have a substantial head start of course), is my current estimation of what's going on.
Renting of e-books is a untapped market, the DRM needed to allow renting can be better enforced on a device with a totally different processor type like the A4 is.
"People don't read anymore" - Steve Jobs.
Says it all right there, he's addressing the issue of why people don't read, the high costs of books.
It costs something like 10% to print, 10% to distribute and 40% to retail a book. Apple is going to do it for 30%. Who knows what they will get for the untapped rental market, but publishers are more likely to get into renting and adjust prices to maximize profit in both, selling and renting, as they will have control over prices.
Sure some buying sales are going to be lost because of renting, but they are most likely figuring the huge untapped rental market is going to offset that small loss.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9779673
After the iBookStore success on the iPad, Apple is going to court more of the strict DRM movie studio types for their content.
The reason I say this is even on Netflix, there are a lot of movies you can only get via copy protected DVD's. No streaming what so ever, but perhaps with a closed system like the iPad they will think otherwise.
Unfortunately for us who already own a compuer, if you want to view any of this DRMed content, from the iBookStore or iTunes, you'll have to buy a iPad. Which will spur sales of the device to normal computer/Mac using folks who ordinarily wouldn't buy the device because of it's lack of features.
The oracle of Apple has spoken.
Amazon is getting into the hardware business? And develop software to accompany it? They are asking for a world of hurt. They will blow through serious cash in R&D costs and any type of return on investment will be years away. My bet would be they will try for a couple years (at the most) and hundreds of millions of dollars later will realize they should have stuck with what they know best - selling stuff.
Even with 3G built in for the $489 price of a Kindle DX, I can't imagine they'll be selling too many of them once the iPad comes out. It (the iPad) simply represents a better value even at $629 with the 3G feature. That is assuming that you would consider the $489 price-point of the Kindle DX normal for such a device.