Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

There are more and more blog postings and newspaper articles about the potential release of an Apple Netbook in Fall of 2009. The way I see it, Apple’s motivation to release a netbook/iBook hybrid grows stronger by the day -

1. Mac sales are down 16% while PC sales are up 22% in February 2009. This is from the NPD Group via CIO.com.
2. The Netbook market continues to grow rapidly. Not only are netbooks responsible for the 22% increase in PC sales, they are going to continue to increase in popularity.
3. The Kindle and Kindle 2 have been a success (or seem to be).
4. Apple has great insight into the success of eBook readers on the iPhone and thanks to the Kindle for iPhone app they finally have insight into user response to availability of the newest book releases.
5. Apple is missing two key types of digital content in its iTunes store – games and books.

Apple is currently missing out on both the netbook market and the eReader market. A larger iPhone/iTouch with a 10″ screen puts Apple in position to target both these markets, not to mention a few other ones like games.

Here’s a really good post speculating what Apple might be cooking up.

In addition to the netbook and books opportunities, there is a completely new opportunity i.e. the death of newspapers and the opportunity to sell newspaper subscriptions.

Jason Schwartz at Seeking Alpha has a good post speculating on how Apple’s netbook will fill the newspaper void -

This new netbook/tablet/E-book reader/whatever you want to call it will fill a niche. Users will be able to take it on the subway, take it in the car, take it on the back porch, take it to breakfast, take it to the pool, take it wherever you would normally go to read a magazine or newspaper.

It’s pretty clear that people see the new Apple 10″ touch-screen device as one of four things -

1. eBook Reader and a rival for Kindle 2.
2. Newspaper Substitute.
3. Netbook.
4. Mobile Gaming Platform and a rival for Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

Truth is that it can be all of these and more. If you imagine an iPhone with a 10″ screen it can compete on a lot of fronts. The iPhone App Store gives Apple the luxury of tens of thousands of developers figuring out ways to use its hardware to create cool new applications.

The thing that might very well work in Amazon + kindle 2/kindle 3′s favor is that in its desire to be all things to all people the new Apple iBook could very well fail at being an effective eBook Reader.

Filed under: apple ibook reader Tagged: | apple ibook, apple ireader