Amazon have slashed $60 off the price of their Amazon Kindle 2 ebook reader, pulling the device to $299 for the first time. The move is being seen as a response to a growing number of ebook reader rivals, though admittedly none have the same wireless distribution network in place that Amazon have organized.
Amazon’s plans to roll out the Kindle ebook reader range in Europe has hit a snag, after talks with German carriers broke down over pricing disagreement. According to German WirtschaftsWoche, Amazon were unable to reach what they believed to be a fair price with local carriers such as Vodafone and T-Mobile.
The plus side to Amazon’s attempts to differentiate ebook hardware and content is being able to read content on more than one device. However, when one arm of the company is pushing customers to buy more Kindle hardware, and the other has cautious publishers insisting on layers of DRM, confusion is bound to happen. According to Gear Diary’s Dan Cohen, that confusion is already upon us: he’s spent his weekend and several long calls with Amazon customer care trying to figure out how many times he can download ebooks he’s purchased, and being told different things by different employees.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has reconfirmed his intention to put the retailers ebook titles on more devices, together with opening up the Kindle ebook reader range to more formats. The recently launched Kindle DX, which we reviewed last week, adds native PDF support; Bezos did not name specific file types, but it seems possible that future updates or new devices may be able to read other types of ebook file.
Pixel Qi’s recent demonstrations of their clever 3Qi LCD display have prompted multiple questions from would-be users keen to stretch more battery life out of their notebooks and netbooks, and the company’s CTO (and 3Qi creator) Mary Lou Jepsen has stepped up to answer them. Among the most anticipated questions, Jepsen addresses price: according to her, the rumored $200 tag is not for the display itself but an estimated cost for an entire netbook using the indoor/outdoor 3Qi screen.
Video Q&A and 3Qi vs Kindle demo after the cut
Amazon have confirmed that the Kindle DX ebook reader will begin shipping on June 10th. Available to preorder since its announcement back in May, the Kindle DX features a larger, 9.7-inch E Ink display than the Kindle 2, and retails for $489.
E Ink, the e-paper specialists behind the displays used in Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, Sony’s Reader, the keyboard of the Samsung Alias 2 cellphone and various other devices, has been acquired by Prime View International (PVI). The deal, which valued E Ink at $215m, sees the e-paper IP and technology specialists now combined with the manufacturers of the panels themselves.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has suggested that a color Kindle will not reach the market for “multiple years”. Speaking at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting this week, Bezos told investors that he has “seen the color displays in the laboratory” but that they are “not ready for prime time”. The CEO also suggested that sales figures of the Kindle ebook reader will never be officially released.
Amazon have begun to implement a remote kill-switch that removes text-to-speech functionality from their Kindle ebook reader. A byproduct of the Author’s Guild TTS controversy, the system allows publishers to disable text-to-speech on a title by title basis; as of this week, TTS has been removed from over 40 works including five of the top ten Random House best-sellers in the Kindle store.
Amazon’s Kindle 2 may still not have a color display option, but you can certainly brighten up your ebook experience courtesy of ColorWare. The infamous inkers are now offering a color customization option for the Kindle 2, with solid and metallic options and the ability to mix and match controls and different areas of the casing.
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