Amazon too proprietary to license out Kindle platform?
From Adam Hodgkin of Exact Editions:
There is a fair amount of speculation that Amazon is preparing a second iteration of its innovative Kindle, eBook reader. Maybe it will have a larger form factor. Maybe it will be targeting the college textbook market. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch wonders whether Amazon would not be best advised to open up the spec and invite other hardware manufacturers to deliver better implementations. He is suggesting that by keeping the hardware proprietary Amazon may be making the same mistake that Apple made vis a vis Microsoft and the Windows O/S. This is an entertaining line of speculation, and of course its not going to happen, but why not? And what does this tell us?…
Amazon have invented the Kindle on the basis that the digital books domain should be a platform, and the manufacturer of the right device for eBooks will own the platform. The big problem with this strategy, and in my view it is going to be a problem for Amazon and its Kindle customers, is that the platform for digital books is the web. Digital books that work well for their readers, need to be accessible from any web device and they need to be able to link seamlessly to any web resource. The Kindle gets this wrong both ways, and the limited but enticing connectivity that the device affords, simply underlines the failing. The Kindle would be better if it were more like the iPhone.
In fairness to Amazon: Remember, Amazon’s Mobipocket runs on a bunch of platforms, including, soon, the iPhone. The trouble is that Amazon is using pricing and other tactics to herd people toward the Kindle. - D.R
(Via Read 2.0.)
Related: Kentucky Fried Kindles, anyone? What if Amazon licensed Kindle tech for other vendors to use in their gizmos?—on Michael Arrington’s idea.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am
If I were Jeff Bezos, I would not open up the Kindle platform so anybody and everybody else could sell books to Kindle users, and bypass me. But I would extend out the Kindle platform so that non-Kindle-users could buy Kindle books (from me) and read them on different platforms.
The difference here comes down to where Amazon hopes to make the bulk of its money out of the whole Kindle initiative. Do they want to make money off hardware sales? Or do they want to make money off ebook sales?
Mr Bezos’s comments in the past, fretting over the end of the CD and DVD and wishing to get into selling electrons, indicates that he has his sights set squarely on ebook sales: the Kindle device is a means of delivering those electrons for sale.
But since eInk devices are difficult (so far) to manufacture, and are (so far) pretty expensive, it is the device itself that is limiting the electron-sales.
Thus, selling an iPhone app (and a Windows app, and a Mac OSX app, and an Android app, etc) that would include kindle-like functionality to buy kindle editions, would ramp up electron sales by a huge margin. So much so, that it makes sense to give the things away — something Amazon couldn’t possibly do for the Kindle devices themselves.
Here in my guess of what is on Mr Bezos’s mind, ‘proprietary’ is important, but it governs the software platform, and the Kindle-edition ebooks, and not the reading device itself.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Of course, the way it is right now, anybody can sell books to Kindle users, as long as they sell them in a format that can be converted and uploaded. They may not be able to sell them through Amazon’s store, but if people aren’t afraid of doing a little conversion themselves…
August 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I read the original article and it is rather disappointing that the author of this piece doesn’t understand what is going on here. The Kindle, qua Kindle, is not a proprietary platform. There is nothing special about the Amazon hardware that needs to be “opened up”. It is essentially duplicated in the Sony Reader, Cybook, Illiad, etc. No big deal. The only thing that makes the hardware special is the Whispernet connection, and anyone can go a Taiwanese manufacturer and have this OEMed with very little trouble. You can make a clone of the Kindle tomorrow if you want, cut a deal with Sprint or someone else for a data connection, and then supply it with Mobipocket books or use your own software to read ePub. The article makes no sense.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Having PalmOS PDAs outside of the Palm brand didn’t work out so well. Ask Sony!
August 27th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
But on the other hand, it led to some pretty darned fine PalmOS PDAs—the Visor, the Clié—that were significantly better than what Palm was offering at the time. (If they didn’t sell for Sony, well, I guess that was Sony’s problem. I had two Cliés and loved ‘em.)