E-Ink Wars II – Amazon Kindle Strikes Back
Now that news of the iPad has died down a bit we are beginning to see signs of life from Amazon. This winter has seen a blizzard of activity from Sony, Apple, Google and others on the e-book market. There is no question that this is going to change the face of publishing and books but just how is still up for debate. Who will become the market leader? Is there already one? Why hasn’t Amazon responded to all this blitz of media? Is the Kindle really fallen and now no longer going to be relevant with all the new tech out there? I don’t think so.
When the Empire struck back they kicked the rebel asses hard. Very hard. Amazon is about to do the same thing to everyone in the e-book market. Why? Because they were first. Being first has its advantages. The Kindle came onto the scene when there was only one competitor, Sony. Since then Amazon updated it’s kindle to a second version and even made a larger DX version with twice the screen size. That was last year.
Amazon hasn’t done much this season and with good reason. I suspect they sat back and watched. They watched Apple, Sony and everyone else scramble to compete with it’s e-reader. Amazon saw different companies ideas and has taken notes. Why have an R&D department when you can watch everyone else?
Expect to see a Kindle 3 in the near future. Expect it to be bad ass. Full multi-touch color e-ink screens. The company that makes e-ink has announced that their e-ink is going to faster, support multi-touch and have color. Amazon is going to take strong advantage of that. They have also recently purchased a company that makes flexible touchscreens.
Lets not forget that Amazon has ‘an app for that’ on PC, Mac, iPhone and other platforms that is basically a Kindle to go. All Amazon really wants to be is your source to purchase books. Having the e-reader is just icing on the cake.
Amazon has sat back and watched everyone else put out e-ink devices or tablet PC’s that really don’t add anything to the market. The next generation e-book is going to be multi-touch, e-ink AND color capable and might even be a flexible display that you can roll up and put in your pocket.
Oh and the name on the top of it will be Kindle.
