Similar to how the wireless features of Amazon.com’s Kindle devices don’t work outside North America, too many North Americans who work for media companies don’t realize that even the newest Kindles are already obsolete and that the future of e-paper isn’t for reading books, magazines, and newspapers.
I write this because a leading journalism school’s think tank released a story today about interviews it conducted during May and June about e-paper devices. The institute publicized the story today by sending a message on Twitter saying, “Just like TVs: $300 price for e-readers will drop next year. http://bit.ly/11JWjB”
Perhaps the institute hadn’t noticed news reports last week that Sony was already dropping the price of its competing e-reader device to $199. Moreover, the only such device mentioned in the story was the Amazon Kindle. I dislike seeing a J-school think take fail being up-to-date or comprehensive reporting. I was particularly irked by this today because coincidentally I gave an interview to a Brazilian national newspaper about e-paper devices.
So, let’s clarify a few things about these devices:
- The Amazon Kindles are neither the world’s only e-paper reading devices nor the first nor anywhere near the state-of-the-art. The Sony e-reader devices predated the Kindles by a year and the iRex e-reader devices predated the Kindles by two years.
- the newest versions of the Kindles, launch earlier this year, are capable of displaying content only in Black & White and have no WiFi capabilities. The Fujitsu Flepia devices, launched in April, has WiFi capabilities and display 260,000 colors. Fujitsu’s version of e-paper also is capable of displaying video.
Fujitsu Flepia
- Most people today see the Kindles and Sony devices only as ebook reading devices. Yet these devices aren’t really about reading. Their true purpose is portability for large amounts of content. The ebook readers are miniaturized, portable bookcases – just as the iPods are portable music libraries. Listening to live performances or music played on home stereo sets is superior to listening to music on iPods. Likewise, printed books are a superior reading experience to using ebook devices. However, the iPods and ebook devices let their users carry hundreds (even thousands) of songs or books with them wherever they go, and all that content is instantly usable, searchable (even search throughout all of your books at once) and in a conveniently small device that weights only a few hundred grams.
- When it first introduced its Kindle e-paper reading device, Amazon.com was hesitant about its success. The evidence of that is launched the device only for Amazon.com customers and not those of Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.fr, or Joyo.com. In other words, it didn’t launch the Kindles in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China, or the United Kingdom, the other countries in which Amazon operates. Moreover, when seeking bids for a mobile telephone network to handle the Kindle’s wireless downloading, Amazon chose the network offering the lowest price, Sprint, rather than a network that offering a technnology that would give Amazon the widest worldwide coverage. The Sprint network uses somewhat obsolete CDMA wireless technology, which only works in North America, rather than the GSM wireless technology that AT&T (the former Cingular) and T-Mobile use in North America and that 92 percent of the world’s wireless networks use, including those in the other countries in which Amazon does business. Take a Kindle outside North America and its wireless features won’t work. In retrospect, Amazon would have been much smarter to have chosen a GSM network.
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Prototype of LG-Philips Felxible E-Paper
LG, Phillips, and other companies are well underway developing flexible versions of color e-paper. Development of touchscreen versions are underway. The flexible and touchscreen versions all have personal computer CPUs, flash memory in the hundreds of gigabyte range, and wireless capabilities. The goal in developing these is not just to create devices for reading books, newspapers, and magazines, but to replace today’s laptop computer with a flexible plastic device that you can roll-up and put into your jacket pocket or purse.
- The largest market for e-paper today is signage. Rather than send a crew up a billboard to paste or remove paper, billboards made of e-paper can be instantly change by remote control. The e-paper is much more expensive, not as expensive in the long-term as hiring crews to travel and work on each and every billboard. Likewise, companies such as Wal-Mart are converting their store signs and shelf price tags to e-paper. Wal-Mart headquarters can that way instantly change prices or promotions on an item in all of its stores.
- The Amazon Kindles are the only totally proprietary ebook devices. You can send Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat documents into them, but can readily send nothing out, and the only other content they accept is whatever Amazon sells. Imagine if your Windows laptop only worked with Microsoft content or your Macintosh laptop only worked with Apple documents. By contrast, the Sony, iRex, and Fujitsu devices are open to more things. The future devices that succeed will be the ones that accept any form of content and work with any software and any vendor.
- Unfortunately, there is little advantage reading newspapers and magazines on these devices compared to paper. While the e-paper subscription costs might be lower than with print, it’s not as low as access to those publications’ Web sites, which offer much multimedia and interactivity. Unfortunately, most newspapers’ and magazines’ e-paper versions (and PDF version) are produced by their pressrooms (the PDF or other images are offshoots of the pre-press production) and aren’t produced by those publications interactive departments. That’s a shame because the Kindle features interactivity (it has a built-in Web browser) and some multimedia (namely audio). Moreover, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) has featured interactivity and multimedia since version 5 in 1999 (the current version is 9). It’s a shame that the publications offering e-paper or PDF editions don’t use these formats’ true capabilities.
Prototype of LG-Philips Flexible E-Paper
I don’t foresee newspaper and magazine publishers generating large numbers of subscriptions via these devices so long as the devices can only be used for books, magazines, and newspapers. Only when the devices replace the laptop computers will the circulations take off. Meanwhile, some e-paper subscriptions will be generated from people who want a periodical but don’t live within the periodical’s print circulation delivery range.
I had thought many times about buying an eReader but couldn’t commit. When I saw the Kindle 2 and the sheer variety of material available to read, I finally dove in. I am reading material now that I wouldn’t have attempted before, due chiefly to the included Oxford dictionary feature. As I’m reading, if a word meaning stumps me, I simply place the cursor in front of the word and a bubble pops up to immediately give me the definition — all without leaving my place in the book. Love it!
There’ve been some comments concerning the contrast or readability of the screen. It should be noted that the screen is crisp, precise and very readable (with multiple font sizes too) however you need to read in good lighting, just like a real book. Trying to read in dim lighting will result in complaints concerning contrast and greyness. Not the Kindle 2’s fault at all.
It’s easy to hold and I love that there are page turn buttons on both sides. Also get an Amazon Kindle 2 cover to protect your investment. Simple and well worth it.
One last observation. The creators of the Kindle 2 wanted the device to “disappear” in your hands, such that manipulation of the eReader would not disrupt your reading. While reading my first book on the Kindle 2, as I became engrossed in the story at one point I attempted to turn the page by reaching up to the top right corner, just as you would with a paper and ink book. I had a good laugh as I realized that the creators had absolutely achieved success with me.