It takes two seconds comparing and contrasting the new Amazon Kindle ebook reader with the Sony reader to see that the extended keyboard, the unfashionable hard edged look and the bulky thickness of the device make it pale by comparison with the famous Sony eBook reader already on the market for $120 less. But there’s a significant catch.
The $399 purchase price, very off putting, already has web blog voters saying they’ll wait for a cheaper version. But if a cheaper version does come out, Amazon has changed the way that eBooks work forever with this step, because the device is almost a free cellular phone as well, minus the voice.
That’s right it’s not the device that’s sexy here, but the service. Sprint’s EV-DO data network is used in background mode to deliver books directly to the Amazon Kindle device, meaning it has a cellular radio in there. This is trickle VoD for books, using spare network capacity, and the up front cost of the device must account for some payments to Sprint for the free download service.
Even so, the device needs to look better, smaller and less obtrusive, and needs to cost something closer to $100 before this is going to take off and we’re afraid that it may be some time before that happens.
In our opinion Amazon should have taken the Sony book reader, and had it add an EV-DO radio, and sold it for cost, in order to stimulate the market, sacrificing the margin on the device for long term ownership of the eBook market.
The device has 256MB but only 180MB of that is available to the user which is roughly 200 books. eBooks can be added using SD Flash memory once that storage is used up. So you can build up a 1,000 collection plus of DRM protected books using offline storage. Audible books will also work on it, and can be copied from a PC, including MP3 files, so if you really like it can double as an MP3 player.
The Sony reader holds roughly the same number of books, but these have to be sideloaded from the Connect online service. It’s battery lasts for 750,000 continuous page turns. It also plays MP3 songs and stories, is 9 ounces instead of 10.3 ounces. Both devices have 6 inch screens, Sony has a zoom facility, and both use 600 x 800 resolution, different levels of grey scale and font size options.
The Kindle store is definitely an attack on the Connect service, and now has around 90,000 titles, but Amazon will only accelerate the growth of titles if this device begins to sell.
Hardcover releases are around $9.99 each, which is fine for bestsellers, but given that books have a 7% or 8% physical cost of manufacture, plus some shipping charges, and usually a 50% retail margin, eBooks need to cost a lot less than real books, say 60% to 70% of the price. Amazon seems to have learned this lesson and all paperbacks are cheaper, though not perhaps 60% of cover price, than their physical counterpart.
There is a simple truth here. The publisher and author make just as much money this way, and the only people to get upset are the bricks and mortar resellers, and it would have taken someone as prominent in books as Amazon to cut a deal which is as vital for success for eBooks, as iTunes was for the sale of online music.
Downloads take 10 to 20 seconds, we are told, and newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal come in monthly subscription rates, and can be ordered direct and delivered straight to the device every morning as you wake.
To us this is several steps in the right direction, but like many things designed in the US, it has completely failed to notice the decline in the acceptance of CDMA as a cellular standard, and will need to come out with a HSDPA version of the device, which will need more design dollars. Had it cut such a deal with AT&T instead of Sprint, it could have designed a single device for global acceptance. Oh Well, can’t have everything.
This product will jog along until Amazon feels brave enough or gets clever enough to bring the price down below $200 and then on to $100, because that’s all it must cost to make one of these, even with the extra radio.