Clearly Unclear

Earlier today, at an event in New York, Amazon announced it’s long anticipated second generation version of it’s popular e-book, the Kindle. As far as I can tell, it’s the exact same device we saw in leaked pictures in the fall of 2008, and from my vantage point that’s a good thing for the most part. They’ve done a tremendous job at modernizing the design of the device, so it no longer looks like some sort of strange device from 1987. It’s shockingly small, at just over a 1/3 of an inch and 10.2 ounces, which as the folks at Amazon like to point out, is lighter than your average paperback novel. However, even at this level of thinness and lightweight, it still manages to feel sturdy in one’s hand. The battery life is improved over the previous version and is now touted at 2 weeks off a single charge. You’ll probably not get exactly that much out of it, but e-ink doesn’t require much energy, so it’s not entirely out of the question. It now has text-to-speech technology, which, in my opinion, is pretty useless. Why are you paying $300+ for a state-of-the-art e-ink device, and instead of reading off it, when your going to just plug-in headphones and listen to an awful computer voice attempt to read to you? Some would argue it’s nice to have the option there, I on the other hand would rather Amazon worked on other features instead of adding in this useless function. The 3G wireless functions are still there, giving you free (no monthly service fee) access to Amazon’s Kindle store, Wikipedia, and thousands of blogs, anywhere you find yourself… in the United States.

Here’s my problem, and why the title of this post includes the words, “Amazon FAIL.” The device is only available in the United States. I’d buy one of these devices in a minute… if I could, I live in Canada so that option is not available too me. I can kind of understand this given the current specs of the device. Amazon wants this device to function without the use of a PC, meaning they don’t want users to have to sync with their computer to receive further reading material, be it a new book purchased from Amazon.com or the latest entry in your favorite blog. They want this to be a stand alone device, and the inclusion of the 3G sell service is proof of this. That’s great and all, but it leads to problems exporting the device to other markets. They piggyback of Sprint’s cell service in the U.S., so they’d have to sign agreements with individual services for every country they want to bring the device to. So the lack of availability can be understood, but it still makes me mad.

I get the wish to have to have the Kindle as a stand alone product, but why not give the user the option. Why not allow users outside the United States to buy the device with the understanding that the 3G wireless service would be unavailable to them, and syncing to a computer would be necessary? Or even better, why not add WiFi connectivity to the Kindle? In the age of WiFi on every street corner, wouldn’t it be just as conveniant to have WiFi instead of 3G cell service? At least then, the infrastructure problems faced with exporting the device to other markets would disappear.

Over the past two weeks, leading up to this launch event, I’ve seen countless news articles from such trusted sources as the New York Times, exclaim that the Kindle 2 is going to finally launch the e-ink revolution. Gone will be the days of cutting down trees in order to read books. The problem with that is that two fold. Obviously the first one is the lack of avalibility, as I detailed above. People outside the United States read books, too. The second is the price. At $360, I’d buy one, but most people wouldn’t. Sure Amazon can argue that since books are so cheap for the device (bestsellers going for $10 instead of $30+), the device will pay for itself, but is that really going to factor into the average customer’s decision making? Even I’m not buying it for the apparent “savings factor”, I want it for the technology because I’m a geek. There’s no way the Kindle is going to go mainstream at that price. I’m sure part of the reason it’s so high is because of the 3G wireless service, seeing as users don’t pay a monthly access fee, the cost of piggybacking off Sprint’s network is probably built into the $360. Which is even more of an argument for replacing that technology with WiFi.

Sadly, Amazon will probably never go the WiFi route, as they’re using the inconveniance of “hunting for WiFi hotspots” to advertise why the 3G service is so great… you’re online everywhere. So what does this mean for users outside the United States? Well it means you’ll continue to wait for this device to come to you, as Amazon tries to deal with 3G providers in other countries. And even at this point in time, we don’t even know if they’ve even started trying to do this. So it could be a awfully long wait, and that’s sad because the e-ink revolution is long overdue and everyone would be better off if it happened sooner rather than later.

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Tagged: 3g, amazon, books, e-ink, e-reader, kindle, sprint, wifi