Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Tim O’Reilly’s article about the danger of Kindle 2 losing its market lead if it doesn’t open up to other formats like ePub made me realize that there’s a distinction that he’s missing (knowingly or unknowingly). There’s a big difference between -

1. Letting people and companies add to a product’s eco-system (while still keeping it under control). AND 
2. Opening up a product’s ecosystem to competitors.

Let’s actually go in-depth as any efforts by publishers and competitors to drum up public opinion in favor of opening up Kindle 2′s eco-system is just competitive strategy. They really aren’t doing it to help you or me or Amazon or even the books and publishing eco-system. They’re doing it for the greater good of themselves and their bottom-line.

What would it mean for Kindle 2 to open up to other formats and to other book stores?

Fundamentally, it would mean spending years and years of effort, marketing muscle and commitment to create/resuscitate the ebook reader and ebooks market, and then, reducing the Kindle 2 to being just a piece of hardware while other companies come in and reap the benefits.

No sane company wants to be IBM and make low-profit hardware while Microsoft makes all the money.

Lets not have any doubt that having a device like Kindle 2, with a direct channel to customers is a HUGE competitive advantage, and one that Amazon would never in its right mind give away. Nor should it. The publishing industry has tried at every step to kill the eBook industry and keep us in the past. Their pleas for fairness and openness are meaningless given that they have done nothing with technology to improve end users’ reading experience.  

I’m just disappointed to see so many companies try to drum up public support about openness and fairness and making things better. If you stand to make money off of a company opening up some technology or ecosystem, there’s no way you can claim to be altruistic. If you’ve fought tooth and nail against progress and a better reading experience for book lovers at every step, then you are in no position to beat on the drum of ‘the greater good’.

What would it mean for Amazon to let people add to the Kindle 2 eco-system?

The real thing I think Amazon should be doing is enabling people to add value to the Kindle 2′s eco-system and to Kindle 2 owners’ reading experience by opening up an App Store that enables tools for readers, self published authors, authors and others. And by letting people add sites and apps for free books, free book samples, book reviews, kindle 2 to kindle 2 social networks, and more.

The example of Apple opening up its eco-system is not a good one for several reasons -

1. The iPhone App Store is notoriously well-monitored and controlled by Apple.
2. The only reason Apple gave up DRM was that Amazon managed to swing a deal for DRM free MP3 downloads. Its not due to the goodness of Apple’s heart – its simply responding to  a competitor’s strategy. 
3. iPhone App Store is quickly becoming a deluge of meaningless free apps with very few real gems. Its akin to a lottery scheme, with Apple and customers benefiting from the hard work of developers while few developers are actually hitting the jackpot.

Amazon ought to open up a Kindle App Store with a focus on paid apps and high quality apps that add real value for users. A few good apps for Kindle 2 that add a lot of value are worth more than 5000 different apps that do nothing except help kill time.

Appealing to public opinion with arguments akin to what Tim O’Reilly is using is a suboptimal strategy because -

1. He has his own horse in the race; and
2. People who read books are way smarter than such a strategy gives credit for.    

Filed under: publishing, thoughts Tagged: | false altruism, free lunch