Contrary to the fancy title this is a rather simple analysis. Stumbled across a thread on the Amazon Forum (link at the end of the post) that has a To Do list for Kindle 3 and ebook designers and combining that with my Kindle 3 Wishlist and looking at -
- What Kindle 3 features provide the highest benefits while having the lowest costs.
- What Kindle 3 features are possible assuming Kindle 3 releases 9 to 12 months after Kindle 2.
Let’s take a look at the features that could make it to the Kindle 3 -
Folders and Tags
The ability to organize books and documents into folders.
Number of People benefiting: Probably 75% or more of Kindle owners.
Amount of Benefit: Huge. Could be considered a top 3 Kindle owner pain point.
Costs: In terms of development time, not more than 3-4 weeks of coding, 3 weeks testing, and 2 weeks of designing and project management.
Potential Downside: People spend too much time organizing books in folders. Takes away from simplicity and the concept of carrying the ‘currently reading’ list of books on your Kindle.
Net Conclusion: An absolute must have feature.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Unknown.
Better Browser
Better browsing capabilities, faster web access, easier to get to, graduate it out of Experimental, and perhaps a dedicated button or two.
Number of People benefiting: 75% or more.
Amount of Benefit: Pretty High.
Costs: Minimal. Lots of Linux browsers are available. It would still take 2-4 weeks each of development, test and other resources (usability testing, etc.) to get this integrated.
Potential Downside: People get distracted more. Lots of bandwidth usage.
Net Conclusion: High Benefit, moderately high costs.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Low. There might be some advances – however, unless Apple eReader’s browsing starts hurting Kindle sales, Kindle 3 is unlikely to see a full featured browser.
More and Better Quality eBooks
Clubbing together the dual aspects of getting more publishers on-board and getting them software, guides, etc. to create better quality ebooks.
Number of People benefiting: Almost everyone.
Amount of Benefit: Very Significant.
Costs: Highly Expensive. Negotiating with publishers is costly, as is adding and supporting ebook conversion features.
Potential Downside: Just the costs. No idea of this as its outside my area of expertise. Coding better conversions would take a significant amount of dev time. They could just buy Calibre and add on to that.
Net Conclusion: Very high benefits and very high costs. It would help maintain the Kindle’s lead in content.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Very High. Amazon has done a good job so far of having more ebook content than anyone else, and now that sales are peaking they’ll definitely keep their focus on this.
Kindle Social Features and Kindle App Store
Add in social networking features so users can talk to each other and network effects can kick in. Add in hooks that let developers add features and developers can extend the Kindle in ways we can’t even dream up yet. These are interconnected.
Number of People benefiting: Almost Everyone.
Amount of Benefit: Very High.
Costs: Very High. It would take an insane amount of work to figure out all the potential effects and to avoid the negative possibilities.
Potential Downside: Very, very high. Both network effects of a truly social kindle eco-system, and the impact of a super popular 3rd party app would break the walled garden model.
Net Conclusion: Amazon probably won’t do either. Or do it in a very well policed manner.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Very Low.
Screen Technology Improvements
Touch Screen, Color, Better Contrast. Much faster page turns.
Number of People benefiting: Almost everyone.
Amount of Benefit: Huge.
Costs: Color is probably impossible at this point of time. Touch Screen negatively affects readability. Better contrast – not sure what the costs are.
Potential Downside: Not Much. In fact there’s a lot of potential downside to not introducing screen improvements.
Net Conclusion: Amazon will definitely add in a few screen enhancements. Whether they will be huge ones is hard to say.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Very High.
Library Books Access and University of Michigan Free Books
Will Amazon add in the public domain books they’re scanning? Will they match OverDrive and Sony’s Library Finder feature?
Number of People benefiting: Perhaps 30-50% of people.
Amount of Benefit: For those people, very high.
Costs: Not very much.
Potential Downside: People don’t buy as many books. A very real risk.
Net Conclusion: Yes on the free public domain books. Rather unlikely on the Library Books access.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: High for at least one making it in.
Note: Amazon might very well decide to sell devices to people who don’t intend to buy many books. However, let’s be very clear that the valuable customers are the ones who not only buy Kindles, but also buy 2, 3 or 10 kindle books a month after that.
Unitasking – Keep the Focus on Reading
This is the strangest feature to discuss because nearly every other feature detracts from it. Especially features that have small pockets of very vocal supporters i.e. better browser, better mp3 player, back light, in-built email.
Number of People benefiting: All the readers.
Amount of Benefit: Huge.
Costs: Not that much – Kindle already is great for unitasking.
Potential Downside: Lose out on fringe readers, and users who want multiple purpose devices.
Net Conclusion: Kindle 3 will maintain its winning formula of making reading easy, and everything else relatively difficult.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Extremely High.
On Board Conversion and more Format Support
Buy out Savory or get the license rights from Adobe. On-board support for PDFs and other formats is a good feature.
Number of People benefiting: 25%. (They’re an extremely vocal group so it seems like it’d be more – it isn’t).
Amount of Benefit: Depends.
Costs: High. There are lots of aspects to it and the testing in particular would be painful. It’d be very little benefit for the amount of work.
Potential Downside: It really encourages piracy. It encourages non-Kindle Store purchases. It encourages proliferation of multiple formats.
Net Conclusion: Unlikely. Perhaps a few more formats.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Low.
Notes: Firstly, the ideal is almost a two format war where Kindle and ePub are keeping each other honest. In that scenario on-board Kindle support for common non-ebook formats i.e. word, PDF, etc. would be very nice.
Secondly, it benefits Amazon to make non-Amazon formats a bit difficult to convert so people automatically prefer the Kindle format. To people advocating other formats (or those who have invested in them) that’s unfair and evil and lots of other words that actually mean ‘unfair to us’, ‘evil according to us’.
Usability Enhancements
There are lots of minor and major tweaks that would greatly enhance the user experience. For example -
- Better search capabilities.
- Page numbers.
- Easier navigation.
- Reduce weight and size (relative to screen size) more.
Number of People benefiting: Almost everyone.
Amount of Benefit: Huge.
Costs: Would vary. However, the 3-4 least expensive features would take just 1-2 weeks each of development, test, etc.
Potential Downside: None.
Net Conclusion: If Kindle 3 doesn’t have 2 or more killer features, it will probably add a ton of minor enhancements that together add-up.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Extremely High.
Better Looks and Multiple Colors
Although this is unlikely it’d be great to get a sexier design and have the Kindle be available in 4-5 colors.
Number of People benefiting: 25 to 50%.
Amount of Benefit: Pretty high.
Costs: A lot in terms of design. People appreciate Apple’s designs without understanding the insane number of design iterations products go through.
Potential Downside: Might detract from core functionality i.e. its time Amazon could be using to code folders or design a better user interface.
Net Conclusion: This is rather unlikely.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Low.
Lower Prices
A drop by $50 to $100 would do a lot to ramp up sales, which in turn would get more publishers on board, more people buying ebooks and create a vicious positive cycle.
Number of People benefiting: Almost Everyone.
Amount of Benefit: Huge.
Costs: Perhaps it’s less profit per unit. However, you have to think that it really helps Amazon in the long run to have a lot of ebook buying Kindle owners out there.
Potential Downside: Creating a clear bifurcation between premium Apple eReaders and budget Kindles. Conspicuous consumption demands it.
Net Conclusion: A price drop of $50 is somewhat likely. Amazon might decide to go with two models – a Kindle lite perhaps.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Moderate.
Journal and Speech To Text
If Amazon adds touch (a somewhat big if) then adding in a Journal feature and the capability to take notes would open up a whole new product capability.
Number of People benefiting: 25% of existing owners, and a whole new market segment.
Amount of Benefit: Very High for those users.
Costs: Pretty High. We are talking a whole new product use, and in some ways a whole new product.
Potential Downside: Distracts from the Kindle’s identity. This is likely to be an entirely different product line. KindleJournal or KindleDiary.
Net Conclusion: We’ll probably see the beginnings of this feature.
Kindle 3 Likelihood: Low to Moderate.
Closing Thoughts
Here’s the Amazon Forum thread with the kindle 3 feature discussion.
My top 5 picks for what will actually make it into Kindle 3 -
- Folders (hope springs eternal
) - Screen Improvements – Faster page turns, better contrast, touch screen and significant related usability improvements.
- Speech to Text and beginnings of a Journal feature.
- Lots of usability improvements to simplify reading even more and focus even more on unitasking.
- A killer feature we haven’t thought of yet. Something more significant than Read To Me would be without limits.
Filed under: kindle 3 Tagged: | kindle wishlist
