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| Hearsay: |
The NYT says the Kindle 2 is awesome, but Forbes thinks they’ve got to go open source to have any kind of future as a popular gadget.
In developing the business plan for the Kindle, Amazon was no doubt influenced by the great success of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) with the iPod: Proprietary hardware and proprietary file formats made Apple into the kingpin of the digital music industry. But what Amazon seems to have missed is the important role that “free” played in the success of the iPod. People didn’t populate their iPods solely with music purchased from Apple. It was easy for them to “rip” their own CDs into the standard mp3 file format and load their entire music collection onto the device.
While users can load some of their own documents onto the Kindle, there is no easy way to “rip” a book. But with epub-based readers, there are millions of free titles available, and books are available from many vendors, each able to experiment with new business models. Buy a print book, get an e-book free? Buy a print book and e-book for one low price? Buy one, get one free? Buy in multiple formats?
Apple has played the same game to perfection with the iPhone App Store. The Cupertino company seems to have a knack for balancing the benefits of both open and closed architectures that Amazon has yet to discover. While Apple maintains tight control over what goes into the App Store, there’s a loophole big enough to drive a truck through: Any Web page can act as an application for the iPhone.
Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition. Open wins.
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February 24th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’m starting to wonder whether Amazon’s maintaining the proprietary, DRM-ed format is a GOOD thing insofar as it contributes to the failure of Amazon’s attempt to dominate the ebook market. If something like the max $9.99 ebook price point comes to be, and if Amazon is dominating the market and taking its usual cut, I really don’t see how publishers and (just as importantly) writers (!) can expect to make any kind of meaningful profit from their work.
I just can’t decide whether I should refer to the Kindle as the “White Master” or the “White Devil.” If Amazon succeeds in dominating the ebook market, most writers will be the field slaves, doing all the meaningful work without any reward, while the blessed few blockbuster writers will be the house slaves, enjoying the perks of their position in return for prostrating before their master.
The profit-sucking middleman of all middlemen (Amazon) is just as much of a problem as the DRM. Damn it.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Reading that Forbes article, I wasn’t really sure that the author’s point was to discuss the Kindle so much as to tell war stories about his decades in the tech industry.
August 16th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I just love my kindle… a little too expensive, but I think it is the future…
The only problem is the speed in browsing the books, is fine if you are reading a novel, but is not so good if you bought a reference book and need to go back and forth…furthermore is difficult to see tables and charts…
For the DRM thing…this is not a problem anymore…
after the release of MobileDeDRM which, using your kindle’s serial number, will remove the protection from the Amazon books…and convert it to a .mobi format readable by various eReaders and PCs.