credit guardian.co.uk
So everybody’s getting excited over the Kindle 2.0, and it hasn’t even been announced yet, let alone released. Even the Guardian is now reporting that Amazon will probably introduce a new Kindle during a special press conference a week from Monday.
A couple of things caught my eye about this article. One was:
Some observers say they expect a thinner and more robust body and more user-friendly approach – but it remains unclear whether the gadget will ever be available to buy in Europe.
What? Not available in Europe? Turns out that yes, Kindles are not available in Europe, and the whispernet doesn’t work there. Sony Reader is available in England (though just the old model), and is in the midst of rolling out Readers in France and Germany, according to reputable sources.
This sounds like yet another case of the two major ereader producers battling to see who can suck the least. Sony barely even seems to be trying, but Amazon continues to waste buzz best, just like they did when Oprah plugged the Kindle, and then they embarrassingly ran out of stock. For 3 months.
But wait! There’s more!
Another great line came from this mook:
“We’re fairly sure that it will be a new Kindle, one that will feature a colour screen and better battery life,” electronics analyst Richard Doherty, of Envisioneering Group, told the LA Times.
Obviously, Mr. Doherty hasn’t seen the pictures Boy Genius Report got its hand on. Check out the mondo size version. No color. Bur maybe he’s right. Maybe Amazon has been putting all their eggs in the color basket, and has been focusing on that for the past six months instead of, say, touchscreens, or, maybe, actually making Kindles.
For the sake of all ereaders, I hope it isn’t true. Color is off in magazine-reader land, which is still a version or two after you’ve mastered the book reader (and you have not). If Amazon’s really been hard at work developing the Kindle all this time, and all they have to show for it is a color display and a better battery, it will be a sign that the Great eReader Adoption is still years away. And I find that sad.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope Amazon’s using all its masses of rich customer data to design something that people will actually buy, and that we’ll actually start seeing on the subway. If a color display does the trick, fine. But I can’t imagine it will. In fact, I predict that Kindle 2.0 won’t even have a color display, and won’t have much else in the way of obvious improvements.
I’ll believe the battery.
Anyway, there’s one more great line from the article. I saved the best for last:
The Kindle is just one part of the company’s plan to diversify and become less reliant on retail sales – and Wall Street is hoping that such moves can help insulate it from the financial turmoil that has struck the rest of the economy.
That literally almost made my brain melt. What did I miss? Are Kindles not retail sales? Are ebooks not retail sales? Is Amazon not the world’s biggest online retailer of sale items?
I don’t think misdefining selling ebooks as a service is exactly going to help “insulate” Amazon from any kind of “financial turmoil.”
Tell us your magnificent plan, O Bezos! Presumably, another part is the super-bizarre new Amazon Turk, where Amazon sells… work? Though it’s well-hidden from Amazon’s regular pages, it actually appears to be real. That is definitely not retail.
find the original at the Guardian
BONUS: Here’s another front page for Turk that, even though it has a sketchy url and the design has that just-off clone scam feel, is actually part of Amazon. On the sign-in page, Firefox autofilled in my Amazon login info, and the site knew my address. Creepy.
