They really don’t seem to have any definite plan for this product, they are just making it up as they go. It shows in the original design, (look for Philippe Starck’s critique of the Kindle design) and it shows in comments like Jeff Bezos’ recent: “Perhaps we’ll create better user interface…”. Perhaps, if we feel like it. Instead of that reply, he should have been soliciting more feedback from what seems to be a legitimate user complaint. I didn’t get a feeling from the somewhat appalling SmartMoney interview that he was withholding information deliberately, just that they really do not know what they are doing.

If Amazon had a proper plan in place, they’d know exactly when to refresh the product, and whether there is a 2.0 coming or not, any such plan would not tolerate a 3 month hiatus in sales.

Anyway, the interesting link in the article above was about ebooks having a future on iTunes. Maybe, but do these publishers really think that if this takes off, Apple aren’t going to want to re-negotiate the method by which sales are managed (ie, they’ll move them into iTunes itself) and the percentage that Apple is going to get from each sale?

We’re talking about items of similar or higher value than movie sales here – I doubt that if there is any significant volume, that Jobs will let things continue as they are.

http://www.tinyurl.com/RefurbKindle

I doubt that the rumour mongering on this site is useful. It may even be accurate, perhaps, but at this point all you are doing is repeating internet rumours.

Hardly a fine example of original reportage, or the vaunted Teleread “accuracy, accuracy, accuracy”.

There are plenty of gadget sites on the ‘net that do a good job of gadget reporting but we expect more from Teleread, not more of the same.

Also, let’s remember the Osborne effect. Amazon may well have lied to preserve sales of the original Kindle, which would suffer if people knew about a forthcoming model—the very thing that happened when mere news of the forthcoming Osborne 2 sank the Osborne 1.

As for the Kindle 2 not making its appearance this year, as TechCrunch predicted some months ago, well, it can’t prevent Amazon from changing its mind.

Bottom line: I find TechCrunch’s current report to be more credible than Ars’s writeup even though I think highly of the latter site. Feel welcome to continue to disagree with me on this one.

Thanks,
David

It hasn’t been announced yet, in fact Amazon denies it exists.