Kindle 2: giving ebooks another chance?

by Dean Evans at Tuesday 27th January, 2009 at 4:32 pm [0 comments]

Amazon has called a press conference for next week and rumours are flying that the book colossus will announce a revamped ebook reader or Kindle 2.

“If our sources are correct,” says Crunchgear, “the new Kindle will be quite a bit nicer than the original model. It was originally described as being what the iPod Touch was to the original 1st gen iPod – a quantum leap in gadget styling and technology.”

Do we need another Kindle?

It’s fair to say that ebook readers haven’t set the publishing world on fire.

The Times called the original Kindle: “too little, too late to keep up with the surging technology on display in such products as the iPhone.”

T3 Online pointed out that it was “let down by the slow, black and white screen”.

Of course, the advantages of an ebook reader are compelling – imagine storing 200 or so books on a single device that’s the size of a small clipboard.

Turning phones into ebook readers

But will a Kindle 2 really fare any better? Even if Amazon improves the technology (taking usability cues from the iPod touch), it’s still got to win over a customer base who like owning real books.

And in a world where mobile phones are already absorbing MP3 player, video player, digital camera, sat-nav and web browsing functions, do we really need a dedicated electronic book reader?

I can already download and read a selection of books on the iPhone using a free application called Stanza (see image).

Maybe Amazon isn’t launching a Kindle 2 at all. Surely a smarter move would be to launch a Kindle application and to make this available across all mobile platforms? That would certainly get my attention.

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