Select the technology companies:
Apple, Amazon, Gillette, Microsoft.
Think of Apple and you think of technology: the Apple II, the original boxy Mac, the iBook, the iPod, the iPhone, iTunes, iWork. And yes, of course, the App Store. Billions and billions of downloads of quirky applications we didn’t know we needed at a few dollars a pop. Applications we probably don’t use but we think we will.
Think of Microsoft and you think of technology. Originally DOS (if anyone is young enough to remember that beast), and Windows 95 and each oddly named and quirky OS until, hold your breath, nirvana on a DVD, Windows 7. Then of course, the oft-forgotten Zune.
Think of Gillette, and you think of razor blades, maybe special razor blades, but not in the same category as Apple and Microsoft.
And finally, we usually don’t think of technology when we think of Amazon. If we do think of Amazon at all we think of Jeff Bezos’ dreamy cross-country trip in search of a purpose and the resulting bookstore in a warehouse in Seattle. Books by mail on the web, undercutting your local friendly bookstore. Check it out there and then save money, even with shipping, by buying it from Amazon. Life changed forever for everyone.
Then one day, the Kindle popped up, following in the footsteps of technology’s phenomena: the iPods and the iPhones and we were all talking about the next new thing like the it girl of yore.
Where am I going? Once upon a time Gillette sold only razor blades, but very good razor blades. The problem was that the razor blades fit into every razor that existed.
Then, Gillette decided to sell special razors for which only its razor blades fit its razors. Why? to sell more razor blades. Gillette knew the money was not in selling razors — those things lasted decades — but in selling razor blades that lasted only days.
Make a unique razor that took your own razor blade and you locked your customer into your own blade.
Before the Kindle, Sony already had an e-reader, a means of carrying around 100s or 1000s of books in a device 1/10th the size of a hardback, but Amazon wanted to make a device that would read only its proprietary e-book format.
Force publishers to publish your e-book standard and you corner the market; you set the standard for years to come. Lock the user into your razor blade.
No one thinks of Amazon as a technology company. The Kindle came out, sleek and refined, but pricey, and attracted the New York Times Book Review readers: those who devoured books and who would love to carry a book shelf of books around with them for $400 plus the price of the books.
Next came the Kindle DX, a slightly larger and ungainly, IMHO, Kindle that is an attempt to encourage national newspapers like the Times, USA today, the Wall Street Journal, etc., to bundle the DX with their newspaper subscriptions into a package. The DX is also a nod towards the college text book market, but, I that will be predict a failure there since the DX page, like the original, is in black and white (more on that below).
This fall and winter, new, thinner e-readers, and some perhaps in color will be introduced, some using the Kindle e-book standard, some not.
Amazon has broken the ice, but IMHO, Amazon has simply moved the ball down the field as a non-technology company might.
Its original version did not support PDFs in their native format; the Kindle did not accept other e-book formats; in short, it was like a computer that could only read web sites that had been specifically written for the Kindle.
Would you buy a computer like that?
Amazon will not release its sales figures for the Kindle, for whatever version, but prior to the launch of Kindle 2, Business Week stated that Amazon had sold 500,000 of the earlier version in a year. One doesn’t know how the faltering economy may have effected the sales of the 2 or the more expensive DX.
The Kindle’s typical owner is said to be a well funded professional who also reads the same books in their standard format.
In contrast, Apple has sold an estimated 200 million iPods and 21 million iPhones. iPod users are as young as 5 and as old as old can be. The only other format other than MP3 that iPod listeners are likely to be listening to is probably the radio.
An iPod shuffle can be had for as little as $50 while the two Kindle versions stand at $359 and $489, (imagine justifying to the spouse reading a 75 cent newspaper on a nearly $500 device). The Kindles do not have the intuitive ease of use that the iPod have. A six year old can take an iPod out of a box and have it in use in minutes.
With the Kindle, you must discover a worthy book, download it for $9-24 via a clever system termed Whispernet and read it for hours. You may have hundreds of songs on your iPod and hundreds of books on your Kindle, but you don’t receive the instant distraction of listening to the cut du jour while in class; the Kindle is for serious time with no distractions.
On your iPod you can listen while you are trying to ignore your teacher, your mother, your boss or the traffic; with the Kindle, although you can optionally listen to audio books as you can on the iPod, the main purpose is to read, and that doesn’t quite fit into the instant gratification 3 minute scenario.
Amazon is not a technology company. Amazon is selling razors to sell razor blades. It is attempting to force upon publishers a e-book publishing format — the Kindle format — so Sony and other e-books in the future will have to adopt the Kindle format.
Color is important in an e-reader because there is a huge market for college textbook sales. Textbooks are largely sold directly from the publisher to the college bookstore or the distributor. Textbook are not a big source of Amazon’s revenue. The size of the Kindle DX would suit college textbooks except for the fact that the DX is in black and white and these days, a large percentage of college (and graduate) textbooks have color illustrations.
Without the illustrations, the textbooks on the Kindle are, well, blah.
The Kindle moved the ball along the field.
It took a bookseller of Amazon’s size and pull to introduce an e-reader that could excite the reading elite — but imagine if it had been the goal of Apple to sell the iPod for nearly $400 with a proprietary format for music.
To be popular, an e-reader must be invisible, the e-book must be seen through the device as the music is heard through the iPod.
The music, not the iPod is the star, and so much be the e-book, in color or black and white.
With the leaked details of the Kindle 2 in hand, I wrote in my February 2 blog, Amazon’s Kindle 2 — is this product really necessary?: “Kindle’s early adopters were, in my opinion, revolutionaries whose revolution has been surpassed by the smart device.”
The successful e-reader will read all forms of in black and white and color: documents of any times, audio files of any types, compressed or not, newspapers, glossy magazines, handwritten documents, even web clips.
It will have a slot for additional memory in various formats with no limits, it will sync to different devices now and in the future. It will receive email like a Blackberry and send text email and messages (after all, it is already receiving the Whispernet over the SMS network). Finally, it will have a battery that can be replaced by the user, even if it is supplied by the manufacturer.
The buzzword for technology these days is connectivity, not exclusivity. Once you fence in, you fence out.
And by fencing out, you allow other manufacturers to bring the world — and not just a part of it — to all people.
The ideal e-reader will be as democratic and as limitless as the iPod and the iPhone in their conception.
The Kindle is but a step.
Peter B. Hayward
Social Justice – We need to strive to change what we cannot accept for our all fellow human beings. We do not have the option of silence.
Copyright © 2009 Peter B. Hayward. All Rights Reserved
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2 responses so far ↓
Carl V. // July 5, 2009 at 2:46 pm |
It will be a looong time before I find myself entering the e-book market. I get too much satisfaction out of the touch and feel of a ‘real’ book and, although I like tech, am not enough of a keep-up-with-the-jonses type of person to want to spend money on the latest gadget. Someday when I’m forced to have to read on an electronic gadget I’m sure there will be something more affordable and less monopoly-like than the Kindle to be had.
jameswharris // July 5, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
But if the Kindle was like the iPod in that people could rip their own books for reading on the Kindle, then things might be much different. Amazon is hurt by having to force a DRM system on its customers. If there was a standard DRM-free ebook format that worked with all readers like MP3 files work with all digital music players, then things would be different. Maybe that day will come, but for now, Amazon must make the publishers happy by protecting their books from copying.
The iPod touch makes a decent reading device, and you can get thousands of free books to read on the touch/iPhone. But those same books are available to the Kindle.
For people with poor eyesight, the Kindle can be considered a handicapped device, instantly making books for it into large print. To people who need large print reading, that makes the Kindle worth the $350 price.