Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Comparing products to species is probably not the best idea and bringing in concepts like extinction is exponentially worse - However, it’s an idea worth considering.

Do hardships increase the intelligence of species?

Here are two interesting studies/pieces of research -

1. PopSci writes about how their struggles are making Moscow’s stray dogs more intelligent -
   

   according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway

   Poyarkov says the pack structure of the beggars reflects a reliance on brain over brawn for survival.

   In the beggar packs, the smartest dog, not the most physically dominant, occupies the alpha male position.

2. PhysOrg covers a study that suggests humans spent over a million years as an endangered species -
   

   Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000).

   This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today’s species such as gorillas (approximately 25,000 breeding individuals) and chimpanzees (an estimated 21,000).

   They remained an endangered species for around one million years

If humans spent so long fighting for survival and the struggle forced them to become smarter and smarter – well, that might explain why humans are smarter than every other species.

What happens to Products that survive major threats to their survival? 

They get better – usually markedly so.

Let’s consider the scenario where a market leading product faces down multiple dangers and competitors and emerges with its lead intact -

1. A handful of companies bring technological breakthroughs to the market and the leader has to match those breakthroughs or create its own.
2. Some competitors create killer features and again these benefits have to be replicated or compensated for.  
3. Other products come in at lower prices or attack the leader on value for money - the leading product has to amp up its own value proposition. 
4. Finally, we have competitors who come in with philosophical angles and the leader has to strengthen its own story to compete. 

There might be 5-10 different competitors that attack the leader and for each of these the leader has to add one or more features and benefits - due to the struggle to survive the leader keeps getting better and better.

Every competitor that doesn’t kill the leader literally makes it stronger.

The Kindle in the last 3 months

While the Sony Readers did force Amazon to evolve somewhat it’s in the last 3-4 months that we’ve seen just how much the threat of extinction improves a market leader.

Here are all the features added in the last 3-4 months -

1. Lower Price of $259. 
2. Kindle for PC.  
3. PDF Support.
4. Screen rotation.
5. Kindle App Store.
6. 70% royalties for indie authors.
7. International Kindle with free Whispernet.
8. International Kindle DX.
9. Easy for Publishers and Authors to remove DRM. 

These are just the features and benefits that have been released. We have Kindle for Mac and Kindle for Blackberry and Kindle Folders and Supersize Fonts slated for the next few months.

Finally, there are all the measures Amazon has initiated behind the scenes – things that will show up in future versions of the Kindle.

4 months of brutal competition have led to more improvements than nearly 2 years of relaxed dominance.

2010 is going to make eReaders significantly better

There are a few trends that are converging in 2010 -

1. The competition amongst eReaders is becoming brutal – Que is bringing large screens and Office support, Alex is bringing Android and WebGrabs, and there are dozens of eReaders debuting with their own individual strengths. 
2. eReader Technologies are competing – Pixel Qi, Mirasol, Liquavista, Sipix, and eInk are all evolving rapidly.  
3. Multi-purpose devices are targeting reading and forcing eReaders to evolve to meet that threat. 
4. eBook stores are popping up with different strategies – formats, DRM, price – everything is being fiddled with.
5. Publishers, Smaller Publishers, Platforms and Authors are all struggling against each other.

The winner in each area is usually going to be a strong, well evolved product/offering. These winners will combine to create an eReader that is remarkably better than anything we have now.

By end 2010 we might be looking at a color eReader for $250 that supports ePub and PDF and has an App Store and an unbreakable screen and gives Authors 70% of ebook revenue.

It’ll also have 2-3 killer features that haven’t even been envisioned yet.

Competition is good for readers – Could it also be good for leaders?

We’re basically moving in the direction of saying -

The bigger the threat to a product, the bigger the chance it improves a lot (provided it survives).

While competition amongst eReaders is great for readers, it certainly seems that it might also be great for the current market leading eReader, the Kindle.

The best thing that could happen for the Kindle in 2010 is -

1. A succession of eReader rivals that bring new killer features and almost equal (or equal or even slightly better) the Kindle.
2. The Kindle fights off each competitor – assimilating the best features and developing and adding its own killer features.
3. By end 2010 it’s a markedly better eReader.

This competition will also greatly help the #2 eReader and also every eReader that doesn’t get killed.

This leaves us with a very unique insight -

1. If a company introduces a rival to a market leader it better make sure they are markedly better and clearly beat the leader. 
2. If not, all that will happen is that the leader will assimilate the best features of the rival, evolve, and become even stronger.

The eReader (or reading device) that stands at the top of the eReader pile at the end of 2010 is going to be much, much more advanced and much, much better than anything we have today.

Filed under: evolution Tagged: | future of ereader