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Why Amazon Isn't Worried About iPhone's Kindle

The Kindle is great for what it is. My sister loves hers. But the iPhone and iPod Touch are multi-purpose devices. Last I checked, they can be any of about 85,000 different things, in addition to a book reader. So which would you rather carry around all day?

Okay, so they're a bit small, the iPhone sucks batteries dead in a few hours, and the Touch does, too. But you can use either while you charge, and you can charge in your car or at your desk or anywhere there's an outlet. Various third party battery solutions are also available.

Then there's the screen size. Despite the fact that these gizmos have the sharpest, best screens on the market for their size, they are still small, and no amount of pinch and spread touch gesturing to reduce and enlarge the image is going to make up for that when reading Gone With the Wind.

Beyond the iPhone and the iPod Touch, then, most of us who follow Apple expect them to release a product somewhere between those items and a MacBook in its design scope. Call it iPad, or iTab(let), or whatever, and hope it's a general purpose computing device as well. With a 7 to 10 inch touch screen, it could be about perfect for use as a reader, and as all 85,000+ other things the earlier devices can be as well.

I'd look for Apple to release such a device some time in the next three to five months, hopefully in time for the holidays. They're building a huge, honkin' data center in North Carolina to serve up content for something... I'd bet it's for this sort of device, among others.