andrew j

Is Amazon’s Kindle Success Sustainable?

as a Kindle owner, naturally i'm biased, but let me share some impressions:

1) most people who ask me about it already know what it is, "is that a kindle?" So device recognition is fairly good.

2) this is usually followed by some variant of "i need to see it in person before i'll know." This is due to a general lack of understanding of the display technology. When they realize its paper, not a screen, they invariably make up their mind -- this is doubled when people accost me outside and see it in the sunlight. While people could implicitly trust the iPod to make faithful reproductions of sound, people are (rightly) skeptical of the ability to reproduce text on paper -- which is the whole of the Kindle's sensory experience.

Your two 'stumbling blocks' -- visibility and mobility -- don't really exist. Just because "you've never seen one" doesn't actually mean they aren't there. White earbuds (a stroke of genius, btw) were easy to spot. A kindle in its case is not.

Likewise, my Kindle does fit in larger pockets without much difficulty, but mobility or not, it has quickly become such an indispensable item that it is always with me. Also, the leaked reports of the second generation Kindles suggest a slightly smaller version and a larger version are both in the works.

Reports of people not reading anymore are greatly exaggerated.