The Kindle DX’s chances of success
By Paul Biba
The Kindle 2 Review has an interesting article on the DX’s chances of success. They have published an interesting chart on web search volumes for the Kindle, Kindle 2 and the DX. Here is the conclusion:
Showing their hand early is a risky move – It does however give Amazon a lot of valuable feedback on actual interest in the DX, how the DX gets reviewed, and what people’s concerns are. Combine this with the fact that they can set their manufacturing targets based on preorders and current buzz and its a good, solid strategy.
Amazon has indicated, and the success of the Kindle 2 makes it likelier, that they intend to have Kindles around for 10 or more years. The Kindle DX becomes the first iteration of their attempt to capture the college textbook market and expand the Kindle family. I feel the DX family of Kindles will be a huge success – perhaps with the current version at a slightly lower price point, perhaps with dx 2.
Its almost as if Amazon has decided that its better to release quickly, fail if need be, and get enough data to set up the DX line of products to succeed down the line. The other thing I wonder about is the impact the dx is having on kindle 2 sales.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The Kindle DX will only be a huge success in the college textbook market if publishers can keep the prices of their e-textbooks down.
Most college students will not shell out $489 for the device, and then pay the same bloated $100+ for the textbook, only in digital format.
Right now we have the technology (e-ink) and devices (Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, etc). It’s really up to the publishers, and to a lesser extent, the authors if ebooks float or sink. A lot of publishers still need a more realistic view of what ebook customers are willing to pay for digital content, and then adjust their business model accordingly.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
What’s most interesting to me about the DX is something I don’t see people writing up: this model effectively forks the Kindle-editions, adding one more floor to ebabel’s tower.
What I mean is that the DX supports PDF. Publishers who want to deliver ‘beautiful’ books, not to mention different fonts than the native fonts Kindle ships with (which make all Kindle editions look the same, resulting in some degree of boredom in readers once the novelty wears off).
To support this, however, the publisher must deliver a standard Kindle-edition alongside a PDF-Kindle-edition.
And Amazon will have to offer a couple more buttons on the books’ listing page.
More headaches, but really, I don’t see any way around this. Textbooks and magazines are only the most obvious examples. Dover books reprints will prefer to go PDF. And the publishing industry has always liked to offer different editions of the same book, with different bindings, page size, some with illustrations and some without, all different price levels.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Someone said “comics” on the DK?