Online retail giant Amazon is hoping that the release of its new digital e-book device Kindle will help invigorate traditional book reading trends, bringing success to a technology field where other similar e-book devices have sadly failed.
Online retailer Amazon gets set to release its new e-book electronic device, the Kindle. Credit: Amazon.
Looking to usher in the e-book electronic device as the conduit to a transformation toward "Book 2.0," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has enthused to Newsweek that Kindle is "the most important thing we’ve ever done," before also noting that the retailer is exercising extreme ambition by trying to "take something as highly evolved as the book and improve upon it. And maybe even change the way people read."
"If you’re going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects," Bezos explained before adding that: "we also have to look for things that ordinary books can’t do."
Features related to Kindle include convenient paperback-size physical dimensions, the ability to change font size for enhanced clarity, and on-board memory capacity able to hold "several shelves’ worth of books" in the device itself, while hundreds more can be carried on a memory card accessory. Furthermore, the Kindle device can also be used in conjunction with Amazon to subscribe to newspapers and magazine publications.
"Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitised, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn’t," said Bezos," who talks more with extensively with Newsweek in its latest edition, which is available via (ye olde) newsstands from today.
Amazon is keen to point out that Kindle is also a piece of disruptive hardware, not just a technologically advanced portable reading machine. Existing as "a perpetually connected Internet device," users will be able to swiftly interact with the online world thanks to Kindle being the very first "always-on" book.
A 2004 National Education Association study reveals that only 57 percent of adults read a book (a single book) over the course of 12 months, which is a drop of 4 percent against numbers attributed to studies from a decade earlier. Chris Anderson, author and editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, reinforces those figures by saying that: "The problem with books isn’t print or writing… It’s that not enough people are reading."
Can Amazon’s Kindle provide the technological spark and persistent connection flexibility that leads to the enhancement of the falling numbers related to today’s reading habits?
Consumers will decide when the device hits retail before the close of November, boasting a 6-inch screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and EV-DO on Sprint for OTA book purchases. It will also sport a potentially pocket-testing price of $399 USD.
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