Posts Tagged ‘personal electronics’

Points To Consider When Choosing An Electronic Book Reader

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

It’s now been three years since Amazon launched the original Kindle reader. Despite the enormous influence of the Kindle, it’s worth bearing in mind that it was not the first ebook reader on the market. However, the public are quickly becoming accustomed to ebooks – chiefly due to the Kindle’s influence. Whether traditional printed books could eventually become obsolete or not is open to debate – but it looks as if ebooks are here to stay.

However, ebook readers seem to have been adopted by the public and many people are buying them. Recent price cuts by Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Sony means that ebook readers are now a much more affordable option for many customers. Whilst the Kindle is the clear market leader, it’s far from the only option available. So, if you’re looking for your first ebook reader, what are the main factors to take into consideration?

One of the most important factors that you need to consider is the quality of the display. Special e-ink technology displays are used in most ebook readers. This gives a reading experience that is surprisingly similar to reading text printed on paper. It’s considerably easier on your eyes than reading on a back-lit computer screen. It is also easy to read in direct sunlight or even glare from fluorescent lighting. A further advantage of e-ink technology displays is that they use power only when “turning the page” – so battery life is extended.

It’s tempting to go for the largest display possible. Obviously readers with larger screens have a higher ticket price than those with smaller displays. They are also physically larger of course – and they weigh more. This will impact upon the portability of the device. That may not represent a problem for you if it’s your intent to read mainly at home. However, a larger reader will be harder to operate with one hand – something which many users like to do.

One of the major factors in the success of Amazon’s Kindle was its ability to browse and download books in under a minute from virtually anywhere. However, Amazon and Barnes and Noble now have Wi-Fi only versions of their readers available. These cost a little less than the 3G readers and could be a good option for anyone who doesn’t foresee the need to download books without using a computer or connecting via a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Obviously there’s little point in owning an ebook reader unless there’s a wide selection of books available to download for it. At the moment, no standard format for ebooks has been agreed. The ePub format is used by Google – but Kindle books are in a format which is proprietary to the Kindle. However, Amazon has released a number of free apps that lets users read Kindle books on a wide variety of different devices – without the need for a Kindle reader.

Ebook prices can be very different on different readers. If you read a book a week, then choosing the right reader could save you enough money on ebooks to make the reader self financing in a matter of months. Before you decide which reader to go for, it’s well worth checking.

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Kindle Users Will Be Able To Lend Kindle Books In The Near Future

Friday, November 5th, 2010

A key factor in the success of the Amazon Kindle reader has undoubtedly been the number of Kindle books available for consumers to choose from. Currently, Kindle owners can choose from over 725,000 Kindle books – and that’s just the paid titles. Amazon also offer 1.8 million out of copyright books which can be downloaded to the Kindle free of charge.

In addition to making so much reading material available for Kindle users, Amazon has certainly bent over backwards to allow readers to enjoy Kindle books without a Kindle reader. This has been achieved by releasing a number of free Kindle apps which permit Kindle books to be read on a variety of different electronic devices.

At this time, there are free Kindle apps for the Windows PC, the Apple Mac, any device which runs the Android Operating System, the iPad, the iPhone and Blackberry’s smart phone. At first glance, it almost looks as if Amazon is its own worst enemy but, in reality, the fact of the matter is that each of these apps acts as a very efficient retail outlet for Kindle books.

Amazon has just announced that, in the near future, Kindle owners will be able to “lend” each other Kindle books. Amazon has not yet confirmed the exact date – but it should start prior to the year end.

Kindle owners will have the option of lending Kindle books to their family and friends for a fortnight. The “borrower” will be able to read the book on their Kindle reader – just as if they had bought it themselves. Whilst the book is lent out, the original purchaser won’t be able to access it. Precisely the same as normal book in point of fact.

Not all books will be able to be lent to friends and family. The final say as to whether or not a particular Kindle book may be lent out rest with the book’s publisher. It will be interesting to discover how different publishing houses react to this.

Amazon has also confirmed that its currently existing free Kindle apps will be extended to include magazines and newspapers in addition to Kindle books. The Apple devices will be activated first, followed by desktop applications and Android devices.

Over the last eighteen months or so, ebook readers and ebooks have really taken off. They are still at a relatively early stage in their market development – but the public seem to have become accustomed to them. Amazon’s latest development brings ebooks ever closer to the full functionality of traditional, printed books. Ebooks can now be considered to be pretty much interchangeable with traditional books – apart from the fact that you can’t mark your place with a dog-ear. It’s another significant step forward for ebooks and ebook readers and will help them to become even more widely accepted by the reading public.

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Increased Competition Drives Kindle Reader Prices Lower

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

It looked like Amazon had found the perfect product for their business model in the form of the Amazon Kindle reader. Its domination of the emerging e-book reader market was almost complete. It achieved around about a 60% market share (the Sony reader trailed in second with a 35% market share), and it was difficult to see, despite the fact that almost every new reader that was released was instantly christened the “Kindle Killer”, where the competition was going to come from.

Then the Apple iPad came along and, although it is an entirely different device, it did look set to spoil the party somewhat. The iPad is not without some fairly major flaws of its own, and whilst most Apple devices seem to provoke a “love them or loathe them” response, the numbers of people who would buy almost anything with the Apple logo on it are certainly large enough to make a major dent in the sales of the Kindle.

As well as releasing new, sexy hardware, Apple also struck a deal with many of the major publishers which let them charge whatever they wanted for e-books – as long as they weren’t offered for less on any other device – the Kindle in other words. This looked set to put a bit of a spanner in the works of Amazon’s policy of providing e-books for $ 9.99 or less. It certainly seems as if the price of e-books has been creeping upwards since the launch of the iPad. It does seem a little strange that increased competition should drive prices upwards – but there you have it.

The price of the hardware for reading the e-books has certainly fallen in the same timespan. The Nook reader, from Barnes and Noble, has seen a price reduction to $ 199 from $259. Amazon themselves have now cut the Kindle 2.0 price to $ 189 – quite a drop from the February 2009 launch price of $ 359. The larger format Kindle DX has been upgraded with a new sharper screen and the price has been cut from $ 489 to $ 379.

The freshly updated Kindle DX is now more than $ 100 cheaper than the entry level iPad – and it requires no monthly payment to connect to the internet, unlike the iPad. Many people will be happy to pay more for the iPad of course, as it is a more powerful and versatile device.

It will be interesting to see whether this downward price movement of e-book readers is simply a temporary reaction to the iPad or whether it heralds the dawn of a new pricing policy. It could be that companies like Amazon and Barnes and Noble might take advantage of the trend for higher priced e-books by offering lower priced hardware secure in the knowledge that they will make their profit throughout the life of the device. Or it may simply be a stalling tactic until the next generation color Kindle hits the streets later this year.

Find out more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Are E-Book Sales More Important To Amazon Than Kindle Sales?

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Amazon has been an important, quite possibly the most important, player in the development of digital publishing using both their Kindle reader family and their huge library of Kindle books as development and marketing tools. November 2007 saw the launch of the original Kindle. Amazon followed up with the upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, and the large display Kindle DX model launched in the summer of 2009.

With a market share of 60% of all e-book readers sold in the USA, the Kindle readers dominated the market. Sony trailed in second place with a still respectable 35% share. Needless to say, other electronics manufacturers quickly saw the potential in the nascent e-book reader market and either developed or updated their own readers.

Competitors like Plastic Logic, Sony, Bookeen, iRex and Barnes and Noble fought for their share of the rapidly growing market, but Amazon’s lead position seemed to be almost impregnable. It was only with the launch of the Apple iPad that any credible competition emerged – slightly surprising since the two devices are very different and are, you would suppose, aimed at different market segments.

Differences in the devices and their intended applications notwithstanding, e-book reader prices have tumbled since the launch of the iPad. You can now pick up the Kindle 2.0 for just $ 189 – a huge reduction over the launch price of $ 359 – and a significant drop from the pre-iPad price of $ 259. The newly upgraded Kindle DX can be yours for just $ 379, down from $ 489. Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader is now on sale at just $ 199.

Whilst the price of e-book readers may be falling, the same cannot be said about the price of the e-books which these devices are used to read. Again, Apple had a hand in this. Apple had, in advance of the launch of the iPad, set up their own book store and negotiated a pricing deal with the major publishing houses which basically allowed them to fix the price of their e-book editions at whatever level they wished. The only rider being that they could not offer the same e-book version at a lower price on any other platform. This effectively put paid to Amazon’s policy of pricing e-books at $ 9.99 or lower and was very popular amongst the publishing companies.

Amazon had to back down from this – but it’s not necessarily a bad thing for them, or Barnes and Noble for that matter. Amazon has always appeared to be more interested in selling books – and e-books – rather than hardware. That’s the only possible explanation for the fact that they have made it possible to read Kindle books on so many different devices. At the moment, you can read Kindle books on the PC, the Mac, your Blackberry, the iPod Touch, the iPad and any mobile device running Android. So companies like Barnes and Noble, Amazon and now Apple, who have a stake in the future sale of e-books over the life of a reader, can afford to sell the hardware cheaper and profit over the life of the device.

It may be that the future pricing of e-book readers and e-books will tend to favor such companies over manufacturers who are involved only in hardware production. Looking at the number of different devices which Kindle books can be read on, you would have to suspect that, whether or not the iPad becomes the reader of choice for many users, Amazon will continue to have a huge say in the future of books and e-books for the foreseeable future.

Discover the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you customise your reader.

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