Amazon is head-to-head with B&N again in regards to pricing of ereaders. B&N has just announced Nook Tablet at $249 – a $50 higher price tag but with double the size of the RAM and internal storage. Similarly, B&N cuts the price of Nook Touch to $99 – a $40 less price tag for a similar kind of device- Kindle Touch wifi – by Amazon. However, Amazon also selling the same device at $99 with special ads offer, which B&N is not doing. In response to B&N announcement Amazon didn’t cut the price of any of the devices. Of course, Kindle Touch wifi is not out yet, and a lot of people have already pre-ordered it. Can Amazon bear the cost of cutting the price of Nook Touch wifi without Ads at $99? That’s difficult to answer. However, Amazon has recently taken several steps:

• Kindle will be available in 1,600 stores on November 15 – the release date of Kindle Fire. The stores include Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Staples, Sam’s Club, Radio Shack, Office Depot, and more. For sure, this is Amazon strategic move to counter B&N which is arguing all the times that customers can’t see and feel Kindle before they buy.
• Amazon has just released Kindle Cloud Reader for FireFox. This is what Amazon is doing quite a while. The company is developing Kindle Reader App for every possible devices – mobile, PC, or Mac. This has heated up blogosphere, and people are taking about it on the blog street.
• Amazon bought a speech recognition start-up yap. Apparently, the deal was completed long time ago. However, there are some controversies regarding the accuracy of the news. If it’s true then there might have some use of such acquisition in terms of Kindle platform in future.

According to a recent survey by GfK MRI women are 52% more likely than men to own an eReader and men are 24% more likely than women to own a Tablet.  Drilling down to the brand level, women are 63% more likely than men to own an Amazon Kindle and twice as likely to own a Barnes & Noble Nook. On the other hand, the Nook Color’s ownership is now almost 75% women, according to Claudia Romanini Backus, Barnes & Noble’s director of developer relations. According to VentureBeat:

Why the Nook Color is so much more popular women likely comes down to two of its unique features: an extensive array of digital magazines from most major publishers and fun casual games like Angry Birds. It also doesn’t hurt that the device has a 7-inch screen, which makes it better suited for purses than an 10-inch tablet like the iPad.

Though these figures might surprise you, it’s not all that new if you go back to a NYTimes report in May 2010, according to which

the reason for the strong performance of female-oriented publications on the Nook is relatively straightforward. Generically speaking, the iPad and other tablets are men’s toys, while the Nook Color and other e-readers are more popular with women. According to data from Forrester Research, 56 percent of tablet owners are male, while 55 percent of e-reader owners are female. Women also buy more books than men do — by a ratio of about 3 to 1, according to a survey last year by Bowker, a research firm for publishers — and are therefore more likely to buy devices that are made primarily for reading books.

Now it’s clear that more than 50% of ereader (that includes e-ink readers and Nook Color) owners are female. The proportion of women owning alone e-ink readers is even higher than men, but a smaller, inexpensive color ereader (tablet) are far more popular to women. No wonder why Amazon finally decided to release Kindle Fire. And Kobo has got one – Kobo Vox. Amazon did never release any sales information regarding Kindle. We would probably never know how many Kindle Fire are owned by female unless Amazon or any other survey reveal any information. But the Nook color experience shows that majority of them will be women. We can’t be judgmental about reading preferences between men and women without detail data. However, women’s preference for reading magazines in such kind of small devices in contrast to men’s preference for doing so many things other than reading is one of the big push for such ownership pattern. B&N understood this and promote Nook Color accordingly:

Barnes & Noble has marketed Nook Color toward females. Ads show women and girls reading it in various states of relaxation and repose: at the beach, in bed, on the couch. On Barnes & Noble’s Web site, a bubbly woman named Kate walks users through a guided tour on how to use the device.

In six months following the release of Nook Color in November 2010 more than 1.5 million magazine subscriptions and copies of single issues had been sold on the Nook Color.

That’s the talking point in one of the thread on Kindle discussion forum. Apparently the discussion stared after a blog post Tom’s Hardware. According to the blog, low price comes at the cost of lower quality screen. See the quality in picture. Tom mentions:

We called up E Ink Corporation to ask if this was a batch-related issue, and was told that this is most likely due to Amazon choosing a particular grade of display panels. So, while the new Kindle comes at a lower price, the company is probably cutting its costs as well by using a slightly cheaper display.

However, in the Kindle discussion some people don’t find any differences between new Kindle and Keyboard Kindle screens, others find little differnce. It’s not still clear whether quality is an issue at all.
It might be an issue with software, not screen quality. Amazon has recently issued new software updates to 4.1 for the new Kindle. However, Amazon didn’t respond yet on discussion thread nor said anything on software update page regarding such issue.

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Amazon Discussion Forum Thread

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Yes, you’ve to remember that when you order a new e-ink Kindle believing that your old one would fit in the new Kindle. The Kindle 3 lighted cover has a hinge system on the side. that’s not the case with new lighted cover. Look at the back of the new Kindle in the picture. The cover design has been changed so that it have contacts the lower back of the Kindle.According to Amazon:

Our cover is designed specifically for the latest generation Kindle and secures your device without any hinges or straps. Simply place your Kindle into the form-fitted interior of the cover and then gently press the device into place.

The new low end Kindle is $79, and the new lighted cover is $59.99 – just $20 less than what you have to pay for the actual device. The old Kindle lighted cover is $49.99. Amazon has decreased the Kindle price, but has increased the cover price.

It seems Amazon is keeping higher profit margin on lighted than on Kindle. It is understandable that Amazon wants to sell Kindle at a very low profit margin since the company can generate big revenue from selling content for Kindle. If Kindle price can go down over time, why that can’t be true for lighted cover as well?

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The rule is simple:

• you can have a touch screen 3G Kindle for the price of 3rd generation 3G Kindle now with only $10 difference. There is definitely no reason to buy a touch screen 3G Kindle unless some strong fascination for physical keyboard.
• If don’t need 3G service, then you can save $50 – go for a touch screen wifi-only Kindle for $99.
• If you don’t care about touch screen or physical keyboard, the you can save even more – almost $70. Go for a new basic Kindle at $79.
• If you have strong inclination towards tablet and you like to read magazines, and occasionally ebooks, and don’t need longer battery time – then go for Kindle Fire at $199. It’s cheaper than many other tablets in the market. More importantly, you know Amazon can support you with desired content – ebooks, magazines, MP3, movies, apps etc. etc.

In a few hours Amazon is going to unveil Kindle Fire – the new customized android tablet. There are lots of speculations on the tablet. However, reports suggest that it wouldn’t be a fancy one, not even an iPad competitor.
Bloggers and reporters discuss about Kindle Fire’s entertainment aspects so much that the readability issue has been totally ignored. Of course you can watch movie, listen music, run android apps – Amazon has that ability to provide such kind of contents as they are in place already.
However, what most importantly is being ignored in all reports that Amazon’s main business line ebooks, and the company has already shown it’s competence in delivering ebooks and e-contents through kindle ereaders which dominate the market, and Amazon has already sold 17 million Kindles. What is untapped yet is the textbook market. Hopefully you can remember that Amazon had run pilot project with kindle in some universities regarding the use of Kindle as a textbook reader, and the results were not promising. But, Amazon has learned what needs to be done to capture such market from readers’ perspective. A black and white e-ink device without touch screen and slow and sluggish nature of e-ink screen can’t do much. iPad can overcome all problem, but it’s pricy. How many high school and univesity students can afford it? Rumors are floating that the Kindle Fire cost cost around $199. If so, it would be affordable to all, and students would be able to substitute physical books with eTextbooks at a lower price. Of course, with a $199 Kindle tablet Amazon can’t make a lot of money; money will be generated from content sales. I think Amazon is moving that direction.

Amazon is going to announce a new tablet on this Wednesday – Kindle Fire. It’s not clear, even though there are some speculations, that a new touch screen e-ink Kindle will also be announced. However, it seems a tablet is creating more buzz than a eReader like Kindle. The crave for low-cost tablets has reached such an hype that nearly every electronic company is jumping on releasing one. Now Kobo is on board with Kobo Vox. According to TechCrunch

The device is listed as being an “eReader Tablet,” so perhaps it’s something more akin to Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color or the Kindle tablet reportedly in the works from Amazon.

Of course, it started with B&N when the company released Nook Color. Now there are rumors that B&N is going to release another version of Nook Color. Sony might have one in pipeline – we don’t know yet. It’s clear that all the eReader companies are on board with LCD tablets. Is anybody thinking about e-ink reader? What about e-ink color screen? What about mirasol screen? What about pixel Qi screen?
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WSJ reports that Amazon will release a tablet in October. The detail as follows:

Better yet, the WSJ’s insider offers some spec details. Previously we heard that two different devices were on the way, codenamed Hollywood and Coyote. Coyote, the less expensive of the two, was rumored to be based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform, while Hollywood would use the new Kal-El quad-core processor.

While it’s uncertain if there are truly two tablets on the way from Amazon, the source says at least one device will have a nine-inch screen, run Android, and will not include a camera.

After reading all these kind stories on internet what can you think of about Kindle: is an android tablet a first priority or a new Kindle should be? Recently B&N released a new Nook with touch screen, even Kobo released one. Nothing revolutionary yet? Sony did it long time ago. But the way amazon revolutionize the ereading nobody could do that. And in recent times we didn’t get any new information about a new Kindle – color / touch / whatever. Everybody is thinking about a tablet, why not a new Kindle?

The ebook and ereader markets are still going through some turmoil even after substantial price cuts of major eink-based ereaders like Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony Readers – all of which are backed by large scale ebook retailers like Amazon, B&N, and Borders. While it seemed just a couple of months back that all other ereaders those donot have decent market share would disappear soon. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. There is a bunch of ereaders like Pocketebook, Sharper Image Literati, iReiver Cover Story, Cool-er, Pandigital Novel, Pockerbook IQ, BenQ K61, Ectaco Jetbook mini, Aluratek Libre, Asus DR-950, Acer Lumiread etc. which are still creating some buzz in the market. None of these ereaders are comparable to the major ereaders like Kindle, Nook, Sony Readers or Kobo. Even Kobo is a very basic ereader, but it has a huge content support from Borders. The problem with so many ereaders is that consumers get confused as to which one to buy. The choice has become difficult even more as the prices of all these ereaders converged to $140-$190 level though the functionality and usability of them are not as good as the major ereaders.

The recent invasion of cheap Android tablets with LCD screen has made the case even worse. While some people think these tablets are iPad alternative, and at the same time good ereader alternative since all the major ereaders have their ereading apps available on Android platform as well as iPad. The fact is that iPad or cheap Android tablets are not real ereaders – you can read on them the way you can read on your laptop or desktop.

My suggestion is that don’t buy any tablet assuming that it’s also a great ereader because it’s not. And also, don’t buy any ereader if it doesn’t support big ebookstore with wide range of ebooks at a competitive price.

The ruling from the Library of Congress provides DRM circumvention exemptions for the ebooks this way:

Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

Arstechnica nicely elaborate this in plain English:

Remember how Amazon got into trouble with publishers for allowing its Kindle to do automated text-to-speech? Publishers objected that this could cut into their audiobook money and that it might violate their rights.

Amazon may have clamped down on the feature in response, but the Library of Congress has now given users the right to crack e-book DRM in order to hear the words. Exemption number six only applies in cases where there is no alternative; if e-book vendors offer any sort of version that allows screen-reading or text-to-speech, even if the price is significantly higher, people must use that version rather than bypass DRM.

But if there are no commercial alternatives, e-book buyers are at last legally allowed to bypass DRM.

In other words, you’re now allowed to crack DRM for personal use. You can enable ‘the text into a specialized format’ by cracking the DRM for screen reading as well as for read-aloud. Now it’s clear to me that you can bypass the DRM, say, of a Kindle book that doesn’t allow text-to-speech, but what about a Kindle book that has text-to-speech enabled. I can read the book on different devices like PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Balckberry or Android devices but not on a linux machine. Does it mean that I can crack the DRM to enable screen reading on my linux machine?

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