Yesterday, I took a look at Amazon’s Kindle for PC software on my netbook. The beta software is missing a few features just yet — search, note-taking and highlighting passages — but for reading Kindle content, it’s quite good. You gain the benefit of a color screen and the ability to tweak fonts and line spacing to a greater degree. All in all, the experience is enjoyable. But will it be so good that it actually kills off Amazon’s Kindle hardware products? I don’t think so.
Steve Paine at UMPCPortal installed the software on a Viliv X70 UMPC and found the experience to be just as positive as I did on my netbook, if not more so. He took it a step further however, with this tweet: “Now all that is needed to kill the Kindle hardware is Kindle for Android.” Sascha at NetbookNews agrees: “This is the beginning of the end 4 kindle hardware.” I disagreed at the time for two key reasons. One, the Kindle has stellar battery life — I use mine daily and charge it once every three to four weeks. Secondly, I find that the e-Ink display is much easier on my four eyes than an LCD screen. Steve’s response was: “Think Kindle batt/better screen with os that provides more. Android kindle app would stimulate the right hardware if mkt there.”
I suspect that Amazon will indeed lose some potential Kindle hardware sales by offering their software for PC and Mac. After all, folks new to the e-book scene get a chance to take a content test drive for little to no money down. But the ability to read content on a computer screen really isn’t the full experience, nor is it something new. People read content on their computers every day, don’t they? The difference is that the Kindle hardware is pretty much an instant on experience. You can’t say the same thing with a computer — you have to either boot up, wake up or resume from hibernation to get going. And you need a place to put the computer, be it on your lap or a desk. It’s just not as mobile of an experience as it is with the lightweight Kindle hardware. With a Kindle, you can pick up your reading pretty much anywhere and with no additional room required.
But Steve’s also talking about smaller devices than a computer, so let’s look at that for a second. E-books on a handheld aren’t a new idea — I started reading e-books on a 3″ PDA about six or seven years ago. The experience wasn’t nearly as good as today’s Kindle is, but it worked and there weren’t many alternatives. I didn’t need an Android device for e-books then, so what’s the compelling reason to have one now? It’s really no different than using Kindle for iPhone software on my iPhone like I do today. In fact, the main reason I bought the Kindle hardware was because Kindle for iPhone software became available. It offered me the flexibility to have a great reading experience on the larger Kindle for long reads or a good enough experience on the smaller iPhone for bite-sized reading sessions. If anything, Kindle software pushed me to buy Kindle hardware — it didn’t diminish the demand, it increased it.
I suspect Steve is envisioning an Android tablet with a 5″ display for reading e-books. And it would function as a traditional Android device with web, email, and all of the other good stuff that Android brings. But at that size or bigger, it’s too large to fit in a pocket or be a phone. If the vision is a smaller device, then I say “We already have pocketable phones that can read Kindle content.” And in either case, there’s simply no way in hell such a device will go weeks on a single charge. And that’s a huge plus to me personally. For all intents and purposes, I *never* have to worry if my Kindle has enough juice in it, which is something I can’t say about any other device I own. In a worst case, the Kindle recharges fully in a few short hours, so if I have to wait three hours to be able to read for three or four weeks, that’s a concession I’m more than willing to make.
Is the Kindle hardware for everyone? No. That’s not my point. But does adding e-book functionality to a multi-functional Android device mean death to the Kindle hardware? Not by a long shot. There’s no reason in the world that Kindle hardware and Kindle software on various platforms can’t co-exist in the world. Thoughts?
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