What’s Next for the Kindle? 1 comment
Barnes and Noble’s nook ereader is arguably the most formidable challenger yet to Amazon’s Kindle. The nook looks good and is slickly designed to be aimed directly at the Kindle’s weaknesses. Amazon needs to respond with some new features if they wish to maintain their current leading position in the increasingly crowded ereader market.
For me, the Kindle’s two strongest features remain:
- Kindle Store: If you discount all of the public domain ebooks at ebook stores such as Barnes and Noble or Sony’s ebook store, the Kindle store has more current and recent titles available. The Kindle store’s prices are almost always lower as well. If you are mainly interested in reading classics found in the public domain or books on the current best seller lists, then these are available at most ebook stores. But if your reading preferences are a bit more esoteric, then your are more likely to find your desired titles in the Kindle store. And yes, you can of course still read the public domain ebooks on the Kindle but you may need to convert them first with a program such as Calibre or email them to Amazon for conversion.
- Wireless browsing: The nook and other new ereaders coming to market have a wireless connection, but so far this is only for purchase and delivery of ebooks. With the Kindle’s imperfect but usable browser you can also research what you are reading about on the internet or even check your email if you need to.
For many ereader shoppers, especially those who walk into a Barnes and Noble store and get to touch and play with a nook, this may well not be enough. To maintain its edge, Amazon needs to upgrade the Kindle’s feature set so that it can again clearly stand out as the best ereader with the most features for the money. Some new features that would help put the shine back on the Kindle:
- EPUB: If EPUB were a supported Kindle format you could access the Google public domain books without conversion. Also the Kindle could claim more openness without forfeiting their proprietary format in the Kindle store. There is a lot of pressure to make the EPUB format a standard across all ereader devices and adding EPUB to the Kindle’s supported formats would surely win Amazon some applause and good will.
- Built-in PDF support: We want PDF document handling that works. This includes things like schematics and equations, etc. that display properly as well as zoom and pan functions. This is especially important for technicians, academics, scientists, etc. who work with a lot of PDF documents. This is more than a niche market. Anyone who has a Kindle ereader even if it is primarily for work will buy ebooks for it. Technically this is not going to be easy to get right and I would imagine that we will see gradual improvements when it comes to handling PDF’s.
- Touchscreen: The nook has a small LCD touchscreen below the e-ink screen for navigation and ebook selection. While it looks really cool, we won’t know until we get to use it how well it actually does the job. The virtual keyboard on the nook’s LCD may well not be as easy to use as the chicklet keyboard on the Kindle. I’m not sure if the Kindle 2 really needs a touchscreen, but the Kindle DX definitely does. I’m not talking about the type of touchscreen the Sony Touch ereader uses with its glare issues. We want Wacom Tablet technology that uses a stylus and doesn’t sacrifice readability. This would make for better study tools which are needed if the Kindle DX is going to go to school. It would also be much more convenient for business use where users need to make annotations, drawings, etc. on their documents.
- Sharing: The nook has a strong new feature that allows you to lend an ebook to a friend for 14 days (if the publisher allows). Each book may only be loaned once. This feature by itself may well swing many purchasers to the nook, even though it is not yet known how many publishers will agree to it. The Kindle allows sharing between Kindles in a family account (usually up to 6 Kindles), but if Amazon can get publishers to agree to a similar plan to the nook’s it would be appealing for many people.
- Public Library Access: The new Sony ereaders come with the ability to check out ebooks from public libraries that are part of the Overdrive system. At the moment this is mainly a feel good feature as most libraries have few titles available. This should change however as demand increases.
- Kindle store support for other devices: Currently you can buy and read ebooks from the Kindle store on iPhone and iPod Touch. Barnes and Noble’s nook adds to this support for Blackberry, PC and Mac computers. Your ebooks and bookmarks are synced across any of these devices and the nook ereader. Amazon is already working on this; a free Kindle ebook reader for PC should be available in November, and Kindle apps for Mac and Blackberry should follow soon thereafter.
- Folders: The Kindle needs a better library management system. We need to be able to arrange our ebooks and documents in folders as we wish, and have the ability to move them easily back and forth between folders as needed. Kindlers have been asking for this one for a long time.
The nook is an attractive and sophisticated looking ereader. Many purchasers will probably be drawn to it just by its good looks. Perhaps it is also time for an appearance upgrade for the Kindle, as long as it doesn’t detract from the primary purpose of the Kindle, which is reading.
With the increasing competition, I think this is more of a must do list than a wish list if Amazon wants to stay on top. What other features do you think are most important? Leave a comment.
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