Amazon Kindle Fire: First look
Key features of Amazon's would-be iPad "killer".
Amazon will officially sell its Kindle Fire HD 8.9" and Kindle Fire HD tablets in Australia from next month.
Key features of Amazon's would-be iPad "killer".
Rumoured to be called Kindle Fire, Amazon’s upcoming tablet will be unveiled in less than 24 hours.
Well, now we know why Amazon's stock of Kindle 2 e-readers evaporated so quickly. Just hours after I wrote about the devices being out of stock, Amazon announced a new model of its popular e-reader. The device, called simply the Kindle, is available for pre-order now and will ship August 27. While most of us will have to wait a month to get our hands on the new gadget, a few lucky bloggers and technology reporters already got a chance to check it out. So far, they seem to like it...a lot. In fact, in reading many of the reports about the new Kindle, I found it difficult to find anything they didn't like about it.
Amazon.com's announcement late Wednesday that it will launch a new version of its Kindle e-book reader in August could further stoke a price battle between major players in the e-reader market.
A Silicon Valley product development consulting firm called the Nielsen Norman Group (not to be confused with the Nielsen ratings company) published a study last week comparing reading performance with a book to reading with an e-reader. The results--which are suspect because there were only 24 people in the test group--find that users of the Kindle 2 and iPad read 10.7 percent and 6.2 percent slower, respectively, than on paper or with books.
Apple's iPad goes on sale April 3 in the US triggering a challenge by Amazon to keep customers interested in buying its Kindle e-book reader and e-books.
If the iPad doesn't succeed as a consumer electronics device--its initial target market--it may find a successful second career as an electronic textbook reader.
Taiwanese e-reader makers jockeyed to show off new technologies at the Taipei International Book Exhibition over the weekend and said the emerging model for the devices is to sell them as part of a content bundle.
If you're concerned about the privacy implications of reading digital books, take a look at a nice guide put up yesterday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.