Amazon Unveils Kindle DX. Big Screen, Big Price: $489.
by Peter Kafka
Posted on May 6, 2009 at 7:38 AM PT
The new Kindle that Jeff Bezos unveiled today came more or less as advertised–it looks and acts the same as the Kindle 2, but flaunts a much bigger screen.
And a much bigger price tag. The $489 retail price Amazon rolled out today seemed to take some of the air out of the auditorium at Pace University, where Bezos showed off the device. But I’m not sure that anyone was overwhelmed with the DX to begin with. “It’s like the Kindle 2.5,” quipped a publishing executive sitting next to me.
I think the Kindle does have promise as a college textbook replacement, but that’s going to take a while. Amazon and six schools are testing out the gadget this fall, but just barely–an estimated 300 students will get their hands on one.
And if Amazon (AMZN) wants to position the DX as a device to help revive the dying newspaper business, it’s going to have to make sure that the newspapers are actually gung-ho about the idea. For now at least, they seem to have reservations–which is why the Washington Post and New York Times are only willing to subsidize the gadgets for people who live outside of delivery zones.
EARLIER:
Big questions at the newest Kindle unveiling at Pace University today:
- Will the Kindle 3.0 save newspapers?
- Will the Kindle 3.0 save students money on textbooks?
- Will the Kindle 3.0 help cement the gadget’s promise as the iPod of e-books?
I can answer some of this in advance:
- No.
- Maybe. But not in the near future: Academia moves very, very slowly. So even if the Kindle 3.0 is an instant hit on campuses, it will take a very, very long time for most students to use the gadgets for most of their coursework.
- Apple’s (AAPL) rumored tablet may have something to say about that.
I’m covering the event live. Please refresh for the newest info, which will appear at the top of my transcript, below.
11:08: Demo’s over. Air is let out of the room with that price.
11:06: Bezos himself has yet to mention price. Other details: 9.7-inch display. 3.3 GB of storage. Native PDF support. There’s the price: $489. Audience: “Ouch!”
11:05: Meanwhile, CNET’s Ina Fried points us to the Amazon.com preorder page, which says the machine will sell for a whopping $489.
11:03: To be clear: The problem was with the projection at Pace, not the Kindle itself.
11:01: “I’m going to choose to find this hilarious.” Screen fixed now. Now looking at a New York Times page. Now the screen is dead again. “You may just have to do your demos outside.” Bezos soldiering through. “I don’t think it makes sense to continue with the demo.” And now it’s fixed again!
10:59: Shows off document on rockets. “I know, I know.” Some tech difficulties with big-screen displays here at Pace. Image is backward. Bezos is game: “That’s not a feature that will be available….Think of yourself as looking through a mirror.”
10:57: Time for a demo. Showing off SEC filings, radar maps, analyst reports. Sheet music. And you know what? They look great.
10:54: New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. comes onstage. Our “embrace” of the Kindle DX demonstrates that we’re interested in using all platforms. But this is an “experiment.” “Thank you, Amazon.com, thank you Jeff, for helping to boost [reporters'] book sales.”
10:53: What about newspapers?
This summer, three newspapers have agreed to pilot Kindle DX. They’re going to offer the DX for reduced price in exchange for long-term subscriptions. The papers are the New York Times (NYT), Boston Globe and Washington Post (WPO).
10:50: “We’re going to get students with smaller backpacks. less load. easier access.” Schools testing the Kindle are, as previously advertised, except not Pace University itself. Now Case Western President Barbara Snyder is reading statement, a bit stiffly.
10:47: Most of the documents we read are 8.5-by-11 inches. The information is structured to be read that way. “Even with electronic paper, you need a big display.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Kindle DX.”
As advertised, it’s a large-format Kindle. Apologies for lag. Wi-Fi problems here at Pace.
“I’m very excited to announce today that we’ve reached agreement with three leading textbook publishers that represent 60 percent of the market: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley.”
10:43: Now on to the problem with paper: “The paperless society never came. We print more paper now than we ever have before. Computers have proliferated. And so have their evil companion, the ink toner cartridge. We sell a lot of these….The reason we print so much is that computer displays are worse display devices than paper. Paper is just better. It’s worth the hassle of printing.”
10:41: Next, a sales pitch reiterating Kindle’s advantages. Some head-nodding in the audience.
10:37: Bezos onstage. Kindle book sales now account for 35 percent of all book sales for titles available in both e-book and physical forms. This is up from 13 percent. A spike occurred when the Kindle 2.0 launched.
Comments
“10:37 Bezos onstage. Kindle book sales now make 35% of book sales when title is avail in both e-book and physical.”
Shocking. Would have thought it was a fraction of that.
Posted by Brendan Walsh at May 6th, 2009 at 8:11 amDon’t textbooks and newspapers come with color printing?
Posted by Dave Barnes at May 6th, 2009 at 9:01 amYou’re right about it taking a long time for the textbooks to come out in Kindle format. The benefit, in the long run, is that they will be easier to update and to save money on paper, transportation, etc. But the expertise that it takes to make them in the first place still exists. And will keep them expensive. The biggest cost to producing textbooks is the length of a particular version and the number of people who produce them, and the demands for accuracy and timeliness.
Lastly, the biggest problem with Kindles is a lack of color. How do you do an anatomy textbook without color? Or a book on architecture? Art? Gemology and Geology?
Posted by Eric Welch at May 6th, 2009 at 9:18 amColor is a big issue. imagine you are a birder and want to identify the bird you are looking at. Topo maps, school books with color pictures, etc. how about underlining? how about cross-referencing? note taking? how about making a list of salient points with links to the relevant text and other books?
Posted by richard servatius at May 6th, 2009 at 9:52 amAny thoughts on how this will compare to the upcoming eReader from Plastic Logic?
http://www.plasticlogic.com/
Posted by Steven Dustin at May 6th, 2009 at 10:14 amSteven, do you work with the PlasticLogic folks? If so, you should have them contact me.
Posted by Peter Kafka at May 6th, 2009 at 11:55 amI like the Plastic Logic Reader a great deal, but I think I’ll pick up a Kindle while I’m waiting for PL to get their product out the door. And based on the cost of other large-scale electronic paper devices, the price is actually pretty reasonable, IMHO.
Posted by Bill Horvath at May 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pmDoes the Kindle DX’s web browser support Gmail? Something better than http://m.gmail.com ? If not, what a missed opportunity.
According to Chapter 6 of the Kindle DX User’s Guide (available on the Amazon site): “Your Kindle comes with an Experimental application called Basic Web, which is a Web browser optimized to read Web sites that are primarily text-based. It supports JavaScript, SSL and cookies but does not support media plug-ins (Flash, Shockwave, etc.) or Java applets.”
So it sounds like they didn’t improve the browser at all, which means, Amazon/Sprint do not seem to understand what is expected of a tablet device.
When Apple finally ships their first Kindle competitor, I bet it will include a browser at least as good as the one on the iPhone.
Posted by Robert Wilson at May 6th, 2009 at 4:59 pmI have a hunch that the e-ink tech that’s integral to the Kindle’s display makes a “real” Web browser very difficult to pull off. And I actually don’t fault Amazon for not insisting that the Kindle be laden with bells and whistles — they’re not marketing this as a “tablet device” but a “reading device”. I think that’s fair.
Posted by Peter Kafka at May 6th, 2009 at 5:04 pm