I like the Kindle DX, doesn’t fundamentally change the game

UPDATE Wed May 6 14:06:11 EDT 2009: Huh, just read Mashable’s review where they note that the early paper partners are offering people outside their delivery range a cheaper Kindle DX in exchange for a longish term subscription. Interesting taking what’s traditionally been the cell phone model of subsidies for hardware and move it from infrastructure to content. Wonder if that’ll work out, worth keeping an eye on!

So Amazon’s gone and announced their big screen Kindle DX. They had a big press event and everything, all fancylike.

So, I think it’s a great addition to the Kindle line. Aesthetically (hordes of pictures on the TechCrunch page), I think it continues along the lines of the Kindle 2, but I think it looks a lot nicer. It’s screen to not screen ratio on it’s front face is probably around 50% on the K2 and whereas on the Kindle DX the screen takes up significantly more space proportionally. The keyboard on the DX is squashed and the margin around the screen seems to have stayed the same. It just feels much better what with the device looking like it’s mostly screen (as it should!).

I guess I find it slightly strange that the keyboard would be smaller on the larger more scholastic (it’s targetting text books among other things) device. Perhaps they’ll adopt the smaller keyboard on the Kindle 3, I hope! Also, they were so close to an 8.5×11 screen, I think they should have just gone for it. I guess maybe that might have pushed it over some size issue given the big borders around the whole thing.

It’s a nice device – I almost want it more than the K2, but I know the small size of the K2 is just more convenient and if push came to buying time, I’d go with the Kindle 2. Another big issue is that it weighs 18.9 ounces (compared to 10.2 with the Kindle 2) – that’s starting to get into heavier than my baby arms would like territory.

Here’s what I’m wondering, though. It makes sense that it’s targetting text books and periodicals – they’re a huge potential market for the device. Text book publishers especially must be heavily eyeing this – given the huge secondary market for used texts, it must be appealing to them to have access to a distribution that can not be resold! But I digress… what I wonder though is that how tied to the larger display will these publications be? If they get all comfortable with the big screen and formatting for that – will they look ok on the smaller Kindle? Will graphs, for example, get shrunk to unreadability on the smaller device? Just curious about how that’s going to be dealt with.

But in any event, I think it’s a great evolutionary step for the Kindles. They’re here to stay boys and girls, Amazon’s gone and made the e-publishing market viable, and I’m looking forward to the time where I don’t need to buy and wait for so much paper. While the price is pretty expensive for both devices, surprisingly so, really – I’m guessing we’re in for a price chop come this holiday season. Ya heard!

felix

I sort of agree with both you characters. But I think I agree more with Michael. :)

Amazon should not be trying to make money on selling the Kindle - the play is not the same as Apple's iTunes Store. Amazon wants to make the e-book distribution model their profit center - as such they need to get Kindles into widespread use. While everyone may not buy as many books as the current early(ish) adopters many certainly would. I think, that the iTunes store proves that most people will buy their media if it is convenient to do so.

In some ways, I think what's going on right now is that Amazon is looking at everything so far as a big beta for usage patterns - in particular as to how the 3G usage will go. Before they try and make a power play on the device they want to make sure they aren't going to take a bath on chargebacks to Sprint. Hence their newly rolled out 3G charges.

I also completely agree about your (rob's) view on additive subsidies in your comment below. It makes sense and is something the periodical world is somewhat used to in terms of offering big benefits for subscriptions.I have a blog post brewing here, need to gel some more thoughts. :)
felix

I think you underestimate the usefulness of having electronic copies of texts. I know I am personally really excited about the notion of having all my computer texts on Kindle. Search alone is going to be awesome - no more dealing with crappy, crappy indices. Highlighting and being able to look through just those highlights, again, much more useful - possibly even searching only highlighted areas? I think there's huge potential here, for serious.
rob

this would make more sense if you couldn't put your own books on the kindle. you can and it is easy. I emailed 40 books to mine the first day that I had, erm, found elsewhere. If it was a total lock in platform than it would make a better loss leader (ie printers, xboxes, etc) but it isn't. If Amazon sold at cost or lower half of the internet would buy one and half of them would never find value or because of stallman-cultishness refuse to buy books from Amazon.

Ipods are NOT subsidized, iPhones are, for example, because one has lock in and one does not.
rob

oh,also, i think that we will soon see something like this happen:

you want a kindle?

sign a 2 year contract to subscribe to periodical X and you get $Y off. Buy a $100 kindle credit and you will get $50 off, etc. Meaning that if you sub to NYT, WSJ, WaPo, some blogs, harpers (please put harpers on the kindle. please?!) etc you can get initial cost closer to $0, but will pay $50 a month for all your contracted subscriptions for some period of time.
rob

my theory:

colleges will require purchase of kindle DXs. They will require textbook purchase via kindleDX and get heavy cut of cost. You will no longer be able to bittorrent textbooks. Since kindles have email addresses teachers will be able to mail docs to kindles, colleges will get a referral cut to all other books students buy on KindleDXs.

It is all a set of actions counteracting textbook piracy and ensuring that someone will have to pay $300 for the algorithms book that they will leverage to crack the kindle's DRM system, though, so it is not all bad.

Also not all bad will be ubiquitous availability of what would be 40lbs of textbooks everywhere.

Bad will be that these texts will have shit-poor dogearing, post it note attaching and margin writing potential.... which is probably not used anyway anymore because people want the $16 that the bookstore will give them for their $300 algorithm textbooks.
Michael Natale

Am I the only one that thinks all of the Kindle devices should be dirt cheap? They should adopt the business model of the InkJet printer manufacturers and realize the real money is in the consumables. You can buy a high quality inkjet or even laser printer these days for next to nothing because they know they have a guaranteed revenue stream for consumables.

Why wouldn't Amazon cut the price even in HALF on these and get the devices into more hands. Hands that would, in turn, go out and purchase kindle books from Amazon.

I just dont get it.

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