Amazon recognizes what the printer manufacturers recognized long ago - the money is in the consumables. The Books are where they will make their money. If they can sell more books by killing their own hardware, then so be it.
This is smart on their part, if it does in fact, sell more ebooks.
Amazon has released a few teaser screenshots of its Kindle App for Apple’s iPad … but where does that leave the Kindle.
The screenshots for the Kindle App seem impressive enough:
It’s already pretty clear that the Kindle App on the iPad offers readers features that the Kindle itself cannot. Color and neat animations are just two of those features. Add to that the fact that the iPad itself can do more - much more - than the “hardware” based Kindle can offer.
On a fundamental level I dislike the Kindle App as much as I dislike the Kindle itself, for reasons basically boiling down to black-box DRM mechanisms. You’re basically getting a lease on a book as opposed to buying one and you end up with far less control over your virtual book than you do over a real book. But that said, it’s obvious to me that Amazon’s hardware kindle is toast.
Back in November I outlined several problems with the Kindle and Kindle development and gave it three years. Now I think that estimate of the Kindle’s lifespan might be an overestimate.
The Kindle is toast.
