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NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > AMAZON DEBUTS KINDLE 2 TO LARGELY ILLITERATE RESPONSE
AMAZON DEBUTS KINDLE 2 TO LARGELY ILLITERATE RESPONSE
February 9 2009
New York, NY – With all the flash and pizzazz of a Hollywood premiere, Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 has set the tech world’s collective heart aflutter with its official debut today. The online retailer leaked images of its re-designed e-book reader over the weekend, but waited for today’s press event to officially acknowledge its existence. While blogs and news agencies have been alight with the news, the response from consumers has been more subdued as many begin to realize that the device still requires reading.
The original version of the Kindle was released to great fanfare in November of 2007 and has been a massive seller despite criticism over its design and United States only audience. Many are expecting that the sleek new design of the device will prompt many more purchasers to snap up the reader in order to leave it laying on coffee tables and bookshelves around the country.
“The Kindle is a clever device and the new version is a sleek addition to the family. I expect it will sell just as well as the last which basically means it will sell out. The same kind of tech frenzy that grips people every time a new version of the iPod
is released will undoubtedly flood over towards the Kindle, with of course a whole lot less use garnered from it,” said Scrape TV Business analyst Ken Green. “Amazon has been smart in not producing enough to meet demand. Not only does that
increase the appetite it avoids you being in the position of having excess inventory which will inevitably happen. The truth is Amazon doesn’t have Apple’s marketing ability nor its mindshare and that makes selling moderate upgrades difficult, especially when it comes to something like reading. Most people love music and most tolerate reading. The cool factor just isn’t the same.”
The literacy rate in the United States is about 99 per cent, but few studies take into account things like limited literacy or general apathy to reading itself. The Kindle, while primarily an E-Book reader allows subscriptions to various news papers and school textbooks.
“The Kindle is in an odd spot in terms of mainstream acceptance. Mobile devices and computers provide access to most news for free and that diminishes the appeal of paying for the same content on a new system. For students it would be a handy device, but few students have 400 dollars to throw around. That leaves books, and most studies show that the average American reads fewer than two books a year so you are dealing with a very limited audience,” continued Green. “If the device had the 
ability to translate written word into spoken you might have something. Maybe put a tune behind it and you could gain a whole new audience. This version of the Kindle doesn’t have anything like that and I don’t expect we will be seeing anything like that anytime soon.”
Another limiting factor in the mainstream acceptance of the device is significant DRM and a lack of distribution outside the United States.
“DRM is an increasingly contentious issue that many tech companies are having to deal with and it’s something that increasingly consumers are not willing to deal with. They want to be able to use their devices in the way they see fit and when it comes to something like books, well restricting people who are already hesitant to adopt a new technology isn’t going to help your acceptance,” said Scrape TV
Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “Limiting your audience to just the United States
isn’t going to do a whole lot to help your fortunes. Pound for pound Europeans read more than Americans so that is a huge potential market they are missing out on. Well, relatively huge. No one really reads much but the news anymore and that’s their biggest obstacle. How many people are going to rushing to drop that kind of money on what is essentially and expensive coaster?”
There is no clear data on how many E-Books were sold through the original Kindle. Equally sales numbers for the amount of Kindles re-sold on Amazon.com’s marketplace were not made available.
Martin Philton, Technology Correspondent
NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > AMAZON DEBUTS KINDLE 2 TO LARGELY ILLITERATE RESPONSE
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