Amazon will host a media event in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City on Feb. 9. The timing and the venue strongly suggest that Amazon will use the event to announce Kindle 2.0, which industry watchers say will likely be a slimmer and better-designed device, aimed at spurring adoption by more mainstream users.
“The holidays are still eight months away, consumer spending is down, and we are in the middle of a recession,” says Josh Martin, senior analyst with the Yankee Group. “But if they offer customers a good deal in terms of cost savings, the time may be right.”
Kindle is already a sleeper hit. It launched in November 2007, more than a decade after the first e-book readers, and more than a year after the launch of Sony’s critically acclaimed Reader, from which the Kindle borrowed an extremely legible E-Ink display. Kindle was widely panned by critics for its fugly, plasticky white looks, but heavy promotion on Amazon.com, plus an endorsement by Oprah, helped give it legitimacy — and the e-books business, too. Although Amazon has never released sales figures for the reader, the company has said that it was frequently one of the best-selling consumer electronics devices in its extensive catalog. (Read more HERE)
What will make e-readers more mainstream is if Amazon licenses the digital catalog to Apple, and have them make a device. They are talking about doing this, despite Steve Jobs’ quote that “people no longer read”. An Apple device would really drive the format more than Amazon can.