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: Rich Jaroslovsky
As futurist Paul Saffo likes to say, you should never mistake a clear view for a short distance. Case in point: the nascent market for e-readers. Everyone from desperate publishers to techno-lusting consumers knows what an e-reader should be: a thin, light, affordable tablet with a bright colour touch screen, decent battery life and fast wireless access to books, magazines, newspapers and work documents.
A flood of new e-readers will hit the market over the next few months, and none of them will come anywhere close to that vision. E-readers are still in their infancy, saddled with monochrome screens ranging from bad to adequate, and user interfaces that few would describe as elegant. They also have limited flexibility in terms of content.
That won’t stop millions of people from buying e-readers this holiday season. Forrester Research Inc recently raised its 2009 estimate for US sales by 50%, to 3 million, and said they may double next year. And the level of interest around this week’s announcement of Barnes & Noble Inc’s new Nook, which won’t be available until the end of November, was positively iPod-worthy. Up to now, Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle has defined the state of the art, at least until we can lay our hands on and evaluate the Nook and the other new devices headed for the market. Amazon has followed Apple Inc’s iPod playbook: Produce the hardware, assemble the content and make yourself the conduit for getting the latter to the former.
The base model, the Kindle 2, now costs $259 and includes a very readable 6-inch (15-centimetre) screen and wireless 3G connection from AT&T Inc that allows you to shop for, purchase and download books on the go. The newly introduced AT&T version for the first time makes the Kindle plausible for people living outside as well as within the US. Previous Kindles were US-only and used a Sprint Nextel Corp connection. Amazon initially charged more for the AT&T version; it is now offering rebates to recent purchasers.
No piece of technology I use is more likely to start a conversation with a stranger than the Kindle; there remains huge curiosity about it. That’s both a strength and a weakness: Because it’s available only via mail order from Amazon, you can’t fondle one yourself at the neighbourhood Best Buy. Moreover, as more e-books are sold through more sources in more formats, Amazon’s largely closed environment...
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