Just like Apple’s iTunes changed people’s music buying behavior many years ago, Amazon’s Kindle is now also transforming people’s reading habits. This new E-book Reader device has made fabulous sales of over 300 million units in December 2009, making Amazon be the world’s largest supplier of E-book Reader terminals.
I am not its owner yet, but once had a chance to touch a course lecturer’s last semester. Fashionable looking, a screen size similar to a general book and just 1 cm thickness. What’s more amazing are those following unique features:
- An E Ink brand electronic paper display to eliminate eyestrain
- 16-level grayscale display to read in sunlight
- 1,500 non-illustrated books’ storage
- Bookmarks and Annotation to easily highlight, add a note and clip an entire page
- A technology termed "Whispersync," getting customers to synchronize reading progress, bookmarks, and other information across Kindle hardware devices and other mobile devices.
Compared to a US$27 price for a New York Times best seller, would you reject to pay less than US$9.99 for an e-book version? It’s cheaper and no need to go to book store or await the book shipment any more.
This human-oriented and state-of-the-art device should be the most “in” in 2010. No wonder why Sony or HW (China brand) is also making their efforts to eat this delicious cake. In response, Kindle just arrives free on BlackBerry this month after its software application for iPhone users last year. By cooperation with these two most popular and high-end cell phones in the world, Kindle is now accessing to business audience with a great spending power.
As a consumer, I don’t care how fierce manufacturers’ competition is. What I actually care is a more reasonable device price for me to afford. But more competition, cheaper and better the product is. By then, there will be billions of device users, which as a result change the public’s reading habits.
As for publishers, it may be a nightmare. No need for print books, newspapers and magazines. No need for bookstores. So a revolution is coming!
If you would like to know more about e-book readers, please watch the following demo video
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