It’s nip-and-tuck time as Amazon’s popular e-book reader is set to get a face lift.
Amazon will host a media event in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City on Feb. 9. The timing and the venue strongly suggest that Amazon will use the event to announce Kindle 2.0, which industry watchers say will likely be a slimmer and better-designed device, aimed at spurring adoption by more mainstream users.
"The holidays are still eight months away, consumer spending is down, and we are in the middle of a recession," says Josh Martin, senior analyst with the Yankee Group. "But if they offer customers a good deal in terms of cost savings, the time may be right."
Kindle is already a sleeper hit. It launched in November 2007, more than a decade after the first e-book readers, and more than a year after the launch of Sony’s critically acclaimed Reader, from which the Kindle borrowed an extremely legible E-Ink display. Kindle was widely panned by critics for its fugly, plasticky white looks, but heavy promotion on Amazon.com, plus an endorsement by Oprah, helped give it legitimacy — and the e-books business, too. Although Amazon has never released sales figures for the reader, the company has said that it was frequently one of the best-selling consumer electronics devices in its extensive catalog.
The Kindle has been sold out on the Amazon website, through which it is retails exclusively, for weeks now. Amazon declined to comment on the upcoming event or its plans for the next-generation Kindle.
For months now, analysts and bloggers have been speculating about a redesigned Kindle. Kindle 2.0 could be slimmer, have a better screen and be higher on the style quotient, all at a lower price.
"They have a whole bunch of user interface things they need to fix in the Kindle," says James McQuivey, principal analyst with the Forrester Group. "Beyond that, people are looking for improvements in the screen, size and speed."
A new redesigned device could just be what Kindle needs to bulldoze its way into America’s heartland. Kindle got a boost ahead of the holidays with daytime-television queen Oprah Winfrey calling it her "favorite new gadget" but it is still not a common sight on subways and buses.
Kindle 2.0, when it releases, will offer a clearer look into Amazon’s strategy for the book market. The company could target the academic text and business books market and go for a larger screen device or just create a smaller, sleeker second-generation version of its current model, says McQuivey.
"You are looking at two distinct markets here," he says.
Meanwhile, competition for Kindle is heating up as newer entrants take a shot at the business. Plastic Logic, a new startup showed a prototype of its sleek, 8.5-inch e-book and newspaper reader at the DEMO conference last year. Plastic Logic gained laurels for its sleek and well-designed reader and has said it hopes to launch its e-reader later this year.
Ultimately what Kindle’s success proves, say analysts, is that while beautifully designed gadgets or innovative new ideas may get the buzz, all consumers want is a device that does the job well.
"Looks matter when there are a number of alternatives out there," says McQuivey. "But even a poorly designed product that is functional will sell well as long as it is functional."
Photo: Kindle (txkimmers/Flickr)
While it could possibly have something to say on the matter at its big event next week, Amazon has so far been mum on the total number of Kindles sold, which has prompted folks like Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney to do their own digging / speculating to arrive at some hard numbers. Apparently, Mahaney was able to determine that Amazon sold about 500,000 Kindles in 2008 by examining the company’s agreement with Sprint, which seems to be a reasonable enough conclusion, although things get decidedly more speculative from there. According to Mahaney, the Kindle will be a $1.2 billion business for Amazon by 2010, assuming that the rate of adoption is similar to that of the iPod at the time of its introduction, and assuming that each Kindle user buys at least one book a month — two pretty big assumptions, to say the least. As you might have guessed, Mahaney also has a bit to say about the seemingly imminent Kindle 2.0, which he speculates will be thinner and longer than the current model, won’t boast a color screen or a touch screen, and possibly cost as low as $300. As they say, stay tuned.
If an invitation for an event at New York’s, ahem, Morgan Library is to be believed, Amazon’s 