November 20, 2007

Can't blame Amazon for borrowing the iPod strategy wholesale. It worked spectacularly for Apple. Why change anything?

3 comments:

Scribe said...

Good roundup of reviews over at the FT tech blog. Having watched the video for it, it's more impressive than I was expecting - the hooking in to free mobile network is particuarly intriguing. On the up side, I love the ability to get away from a PC-based delivery route. On the down side, a) how compatible is it in countries other than the US, and b) how much are customers locked into Amazon's delivery routes? The video mentions you can use a memory card, but they don't seem to go out of the way to let you know you can stick your own e-books on there.

Still, even if this is a "beta" market run, maybe it shows that e-readers have some life in them, which is nice to know.

Composing said...

Yeah, the free wireless connection is a very clever way for Amazon to remove a huge barrier to entry. That's the interesting thing here.

Of course, because they're paying the phone-call they want to make sure people use it mainly to read stuff bought from Amazon or from content providers who Amazon can toll in some way. I think that's fair enough to begin with but it's gonna have to open up at some point.

Maybe a more open version where you *do* pay your own connectivity is on the way.

For me personally, the interesting thing is whether this validates (and popularizes / brings down the cost of) electronic-paper type screens. I'd really like to see that.

Composing said...

Also : another post pointing out the difference with iPod :
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/why-amazons-kindle-is-no-ipod.html

It *is* a good point.