I know, I should be posting about last week's case study (and I will), but this has been bugging me today for some reason, and I thought I would vent.
If you haven't heard, Amazon just launched (yesterday) a new eBook reader called the Kindle. If you haven't heard about it, go to www.amazon.com and check it out (note the letter on the home page from Bezos himself).
As you can tell from the title of this post, I think it's a bad idea. To be honest, this is not about the Kindle specifically, but ebook reading devices in general (so the Sony eReader counts in this, too). Why do I feel this way? Simple. I do not need another device. I love books. I read a lot (when school isn't overwhelming). I'm kind of a mixed media type, so audiobooks don't always cut it - I'd rather be reading a book while listening to music, not just listening to a book. Plus, audiobooks are hard to transport, which is part of the reason I don't like these eBook readers.
The last thing I need is one more device to carry around. On any given day, I usually have about five devices that I carry around (not always on my person, but with me in the car, too). A GPS Navigation system, an mp3 player, a laptop for email, a cell phone, a video player. Now, if I want to read books electronically (which I actually don't mind), I need to carry one more device. No thank you (and I haven't even included the digital camera I have).
I've gotten to the point where I've gotten the five (six if you include the ebook reader) down to three or four. I have an old Compaq Ipaq that runs Windows Mobile that doubles as my GPS Navigation system, video player and ebook reader (although MS's reader format isn't as widely popular as it could have been). I still have a cell phone (and I can get some email on that), a laptop, the iPaq and an mp3 player (the iPaq's only real storage is through memory cards and I hate swapping them out every time I need to change media types, so I don't use it for playing mp3s).
Now on my laptop, I have music, movies, and would love to have more ebooks available. But I only want one device. A device that syncs to my laptop to let me load (in one shot) all the media I want at that time (whether books, movies, tv shows, music, whatever), works as a GPS Nav system, I can get to my email, and I can use it as my cell phone. The iPhone comes close, but there's no eBook reader (as far as I know, though it may support eBooks in PDF format), and no GPS Navigation system.
The new Kindle device doesn't have WiFi, but does allow you to check email over EVDO (a high-speed cell phone data network) and books cost $9.99 plus the data plan for the high-speed network.
The iPhone (8GB of storage) costs $399 (plus cell phone voice and data plans ). The Kindle (256MB of Storage) costs $399. If I were to pick one over the other, I'd say for the money, I'd take the iPhone. It wouldn't replace all of my devices (yet), but it comes closer than the Kindle ever will. And, one day, there may even be a 16GB model that will support GPS. Then I will be that much closer to carrying one device around wherever I go.
What the industry needs is convergence, not divergence. Less devices, more features. Please!! Is someone (other than Apple) listening??
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2 comments:
Jim, I couldn't agree more. I'm sick of buying 6 devices to make sure i'm fully occupied during business trips. However, I disagree with audio books, but that is a matter of opinion. I buy audio books through iTunes and listen to them on my iPod. But it sounds like you are a PC shop so i understand your pain nonetheless. The kindle is an interesting idea, i'm going to have to look it up to get the whole picture. Thanks for the heads up.
Jim, you're not far off from our case anyway. The case is about marketing strategy and that's what Amazon is doing with kindle. See how Melissa's reaction to Kindle?! Ask this question again in class and see how many people would be curious enough to try kindle. Then try some marketing & see the result.
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