Amazon.com has decided to cut the price of the Kindle from $359 to $299. The Kindle 2 was introduced back in February. Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said that the company is dropping the price because they are decreasing costs to manufacture the device. However the Kindle DX will remain at a price of $489.
The success of the Kindle will add about $310 million in revenue and $70 million to the bottom line for Amazon.com. This will give the company a rise in $2 billion in revenue and $560 million in profit by 2012 according to Sandeep Aggarwal, a research analyst at Collins Stewart.
Currently there are about 300,000 books available for download on the Kindle. When the first generation Kindle was introduced, there was about 90,000 books available.
Amazon.com has filed for a couple of patents that imply that there will be books supported by advertising available for download. The e-books that have advertising built in would be free or discounted.
The advertising patent that was filed earlier this month was entitled “Incorporating Advertising In On-Demand Generated Content.” The other advertising patent was called “On-Demand Generating E-Book Content With Advertising.”
Amazon.com subsidiary Amazon Technologies filed for a patent called “Method and system for access to electronic version of a physical work based on user ownership of the physical work” back in December 2006. The patent was approved last month. This allows buyers of a physical book to receive an e-book bundle.
One of the reasons why consumers may be resistant to purchasing a Kindle is the price-per-book cost on top of the already high price of the Kindle. Having books available for free may encourage more people to buy the Kindle.
Earlier this week Amazon.com announced that the source code for Kindle devices has been open sourced. The code is based on Linux kernel 2.6.22 with 2.1 software along with E Ink drivers and other hardware drivers. The licenses for the code is unknown too, but it believed to be the GNU General Public License. The code for the original Kindle, the Kindle DX, and the Kindle 2 is available here.
Let’s say that you own a Kindle and bought several books that are publicized by Random House. You will no longer have the ability to have the text-to-speech feature, meaning having the book read back to you. If you are blind, then you are getting shafted here.
Random House decided to have the feature turned off as part of an option that Amazon.com gave to publishing companies. The Authors Guild decided to protest against the text-to-speech feature shortly after the device was released. So far at least 40 books have had the feature removed including those by authors Stephen King and Toni Morrison.
Tim Arango, an editor at the New York Times wrote an article yesterday criticizing the Text-to-Speech feature built in to the Kindle. Arango stated that the Kindle pronounces Barack (rhyming with black) and Obama (rhyming with Alabama). Gawker likens the New York Times homepage to having the same type of content as the Digg homepage based on this article and suggests that the newspaper company is being on the defensive.
If the Times really is being on the defensive side here, they have some work to do. Criticizing a feature that may assist illiterate or dyslexic people understand what is written isn’t exactly the most politically correct target to go after. The text-to-speech feature is provided by Nuance Communications. The correct pronunciation has been added to the President’s name now. The correct pronunciation will be added through a wireless update to the devices.
“These things happen a lot,” stated Nuance executive Steve Chambers. “It’s not even considered a bug. If it encounters a word it has never seen, it approaches it almost like a kid, phonetically.” Now that Arango helped fix a glitch regarding the President’s name, I’m wondering if the Kindle can pronounce Arango correctly.
The last time I wrote about Discovery Communications was in October 2007 when they announced that they were acquiring HowStuffWorks.com for $250 million. A couple months before that, Discovery also bought out TreeHugger.com for about $10-$15 million. It looks like Discovery wants to collect some money for themselves now because they have filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com over the Amazon.com Kindle.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. The lawsuit is in regards to a patent for an encyption system used for e-books. Discovery is seeking triple damages and “continuing royalty” for the device.
Amazon.com’s Kindle has become very popular with the recent release of the second version with a text-to-speech feature.
“The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems,” stated Joseph A. LaSala Jr., general counsel of Discovery. “We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation.”
Discovery filed for a patent in 1999 that was titled “electronic book security and copyright protection system.” They were awarded the patent in 2007.
Its been about one week since the Amazon.com Kindle 2 has been available for purchase. But Amazon.com doesn’t want to leave Apple in the dark in terms of providing books on handheld devices. Amazon is going to unveil a free application later today that will allow electronic books to be read on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It will be available on the Apple App Store.
The application will have access to the same e-books, mags, and newspapers that are supported by the Kindle. The application has a Whisper Sync feature that allows users to pick up where they left off when reading books.
The Amazon.com Kindle 2 currently retails for $359 and has a Text-to-Speech feature. This feature was criticized by the Authors Guild. As a settlement, Amazon.com made this feature optional for publishers.
Earlier this week, the Amazon.com Kindle 2 started shipping. The Kindle 2 has more space to hold more books than the original and even contains a feature called text-to-speech. A robotic computer voice even reads the book for you if you like.
The Authors Guild, a group that represents 9,000 book authors apparently criticized Amazon for having this feature. Amazon wrote a press release saying that the feature is legal, but decided to give the copyright owners the option to choose whether to allow the ebook to have Text-to-speech built-in. Amazon pretty much did this as a concession, but they didn’t have to do it.
This interview made me want to buy the Kindle 2 even more. Especially the part where Bezos said that with the Kindle 2, you can read with only one hand.
