BusinessWeek have a good write-up on Apple’s Kindle 2 Rival, and the first professionally done tech video I’ve seen in a long time. From this article the Apple Media Pad seems not to be targeting Kindles or reading.
Do check out the BusinessWeek article. The image is a screen capture from their video (courtesy Business Week).
Apple Media Pad - doesn't really target Kindle 2
The big news is that there are 2 wireless devices Apple and Verizon Wireless are talking about -
- An iPhone Lite that’s at a lower price point than the iPhone and smaller. This makes a ton of sense.
- An Apple Media Pad that’s larger than the iPhone. Spencer Ante (Business Week) specifically called it the size of the Kindle, though with a touchscreen covering the whole surface area.
Mr. Ante does say that there are reasons the deal might never happen – mostly because of Apple’s insistence on totally controlling the iPhone App Store and getting the revenues break-up it wants.
However, given how fast AT&T have been adding subscribers, Verizon doesn’t really have too many options. The timeline given in the article (summer of 2009) does indicate that Apple understands the risk of netbooks and wants to move fast.
At this point it’s good news for Amazon and Kindle since the Apple Media Pad obviously is targetting entertainment rather than reading. The danger is that the much larger screen would make more people stick with reading ebooks on a non-optimal screen because they can also play games and watch movies on it.
Basically we’ll have -
- People who read a lot buying the Kindle 2/ Kindle 3.
- People who’re 1 book a month people buy the Apple Media Pad and use Kindle for iPhone, Stanza or another Reading App.
With the Media Pad Apple is neither targeting Kindle 2, nor netbooks. Rather it’s consolidating and expanding its control over entertainment.
Filed under: apple ibook reader Tagged: | apple ireader, kindle vs apple
