The Amazon Kindle Is A Goner
Here are 2 great TV ads for the Amazon Kindle, in a last-ditch attempt by Amazon to prop up its specialized ebook reader.
As you enjoy the extreme creativity of the people who shot the ads, you may share my view that Amazon has truly wasted its money on them:
The reason for the futile attempt? Here’s just ONE reason out of many:
See how rich and moving the experience really is with an iPad?
At $499 for the 16GB iPad which does a zillion things in full blazing color, which is just $10 more than the Kindle DX which only lets you read ebooks in black and white, would you bet on the Kindle being around much longer, in its current form?
With over 2.5 million users having bought the Kindle over the past 2 years it’s available just to read books on a black and white screen – what’s your guess that there will be millions more who’ll prefer the iPad over the Kindle for reading as well, from this point onward?
Amazon should save its money on ads and funnel all of it into developing an IMPROVED Kindle that is better than the iPad in terms of looks, feel and experience (not just MATCH the iPad – because what’s the point?).
But it’s an uphill battle because Apple has set the bar so high that it’s really difficult to see how much better ANY other tablet can be.
And even assuming that Amazon can create a “better iPad” – by the time it could come up with that alternative, it really wouldn’t matter much anymore.
So the EASIEST AND LEAST RISKY strategy for Amazon to ensure that the Kindle still has a role to play is to simply slash its price.
Even making a loss from each unit of Kindle sold (* gasp *) – so that it can earn from the increased sales of its ebooks (as more users will now own a Kindle due to its cheaper price).
Or Amazon can let it die a natural death and rely on its just-released Kindle for the iPad app that iPad users can use to purchase books from its ebookstore.
At least until Apple decides to only allow ebooks to be purchased from its iBookstore only – assuming this isn’t against any anti-competitive laws in existence…
Sen Ze
