I was not that impressed with this model and I believed that the option of downloading of book content was not such an attractive business model as that for music.

Other E-Readers were an alternative to the Kindle, and in particular the forthcoming PlasticLogic Reader. The business model for this reader was better than that Amazon put forward for the Kindle as it aimed at a wider market segment including business documents from Microsoft Word and PowerPoint as well as PDF documents. It also allowed users to transfer these documents from their PCs without having to use proprietary formats and without having to load them down from the Amazon store. The Letter (A4) size format of the PlasticLogic device allowed much easier document reading. I stated that the PlasticLogic Reader would be suited for newspapers and magazines and could open up a new market for educational books. These applications would require the publishers of magazines, newspapers and educational books to develop new business models to open up these markets for E-Readers.

It appears that Amazon is following these ideas in its latest announcements. Last week Amazon.com made a major move to change the E-Reader market with the launch of their new Kindle DX. This is aimed at three major user groups. These are for college students to replace their expensive textbooks by downloading this content into the Kindle DX. The second model is for newspaper and magazine readers, and the third model is for corporate consumers. The new Kindle has a larger 9.7 inch diameter screen to allow much better reading of the formats of newspaper and magazines.

This is a major improvement over the current Kindle 1 and 2 E-Readers and the new Kindle DX will become available this summer. It does however still have some serious limitations. Apart from the proprietary Kindle DRM restricted AZW book format and the unprotected Mobipocket MOBI format, the new reader also supports reading of PDF documents. This means however than anything not purchased from the Amazon store has first to be converted into either a MOBI or PDF format. Use of PDF however is somewhat restricting as it does not allow a document to reflow easily to the format of the Kindle and has to be laid out specifically for the device. Data can be loaded into the Kindle DX either via the USB interface or via email through Amazon Whispernet, and then downloaded via the Sprint 3G data network.  At this time the Kindle readers are only available in the U.S. because of being limited to using Whispernet and Sprint. There is no WiFi in the device and as yet no agreements with cellular suppliers outside the US so Kindles are not available elsewhere.

Already we have announcements from the New York Times and Washington Post that they plan to offer newspaper subscriptions for Kindle DX users, and to offer discounted subscriptions in areas where there is no home delivery of these newspapers. That is a great model for extending the coverage of these papers, for instance The Times newspaper is not delivered to my home, with Kindle DX I could receive it daily. This potentially is a great opportunity for newspaper and magazine publishers to rethink their business models. If one takes out a subscription to a newspaper or magazine will the set up process take account of my location and my interests to personalise the publication to fit my needs? Will they enhance the advertising to allow multiple media content?

There are however limitations in the way the new Kindle DX may be used. In the educational area how secure will the publisher’s content be. College students are world class at cracking code and no doubt the proprietary formats for holding this data will be chickenfeed to break for a student computer geek. No doubt we will soon see all the educational content appearing on BitTorrent based sharing sites around the world. In theory this is a great business model for enhancing the educational world for students, but it may be a real killer app, and I mean killer for the educational publishers.  We must also consider the advertising model for newspapers and magazines where ads are placed in colour but for the Kindle subscriptions only delivered in monochrome. How will the advertisers react and will they expect to pay less to place ads in publications available on the Kindle?

What is good in this is Amazon is learning about the market. At first it thought that books were the market that would replicate the music market. Now they found this is not happening they are looking at a wider market and building understanding of it and creating market share. The PlasticLogic Reader is a better product, but where will PlasticLogic stand in terms of market understanding and established distribution channels when they come to market later this year?

Whatever will happen this is a major move in the publishing world and one that the print based publications must understand and react to. Perhaps the push will be to adopt more personalisation together with high-speed inkjet printing to build new print based business models.

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