Apple’s iTablet?
How many video aps can you imagine?
Amazon sold close to a half million Kindles last year and may sell even more this year, but Kindle has an inherent structural problem – it only can carry text.
Wired is reporting that Apple is due to release a video tablet, essentially an 8×10 iPhone later this year.
An Apple tablet represent enormous potential for an entirely new kind of media – a melding of text and web and video. It could prove the salvation of newspapers, if newspapers can transit to a grammar that is far more video driven and interactive. Conventional television news should not be far behind.
While the new device would instantly crush Kindle (text of course is downloadable) it presents even more intriguing potential for magazines, just starting to feel the impact of the web. Imagine what it would be like to be able to download magazine titles: video, text and photos, as well as interactive, real-time and community based. Updatable.
Yet do away with the expense of printing, paper and distribution.
And of course, a great deal of it will be video.
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Have you seen this ap that makes it possible to watch full-length episodes, live sports and from your iPhone?
http://www.flotv.com/whatisflo.php
This tv-to-internet-to-phone revolution is unfolding quickly …
AT&T is now offering “prime time in the palm of your hand”
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/messaging-internet/mobile-tv/index.jsp
I don’t think the upcoming Apple multimedia tablet (probably slated for September) will kill the Kindle, it might actually help boost the sales of the it.
The main reason why the Kindle is becoming successful is because of “E-Ink” – which are specialized screens that reduce the eye fatigue usually associated with the LCD screens that we have now. Also, a Kindle device can be used for four weeks on a single charge, the Apple tablet will be lucky to have 10 hours.
“E-Ink” is still in its infancy, and hundreds of US, Chinese and Japanese companies are scrambling to up the technology quickly because there is a gold mine to be had. There are already color photo e-inks out there (this is from 2006 – http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/20/fujitsu-demos-color-e-ink-lcd/) and bendable displays coming soon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6bkmPjVF-k and http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22232/). And video is currently being tested here in the US and Japan – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n2xxqMQyfY .
Amazon is releasing the newer, larger Kindle that is targeted to readers of newspapers and textbooks tomorrow:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/04/amazon-press-event-wednesday-may-6th-see-you-and-then-new-kind/
I also think you’re off in declaring that an iTablet would automatically kill the Kindle. First off, the Kindle is NOT a text-only device. It can already display grayscale photos quite well. Color is one generation off, and video is probably a generation behind that.
Battery life is the big deal-breaker for the iTablet–it’s unlikely anything with a 10″ backlit display will have more than 6 hours battery life, especially given Apple’s penchant for slim form factors.
The next deal-breaker is eyestrain–Kindle is much better suited to long stretches of reading because it’s not backlit.
The big unknown is content availability–if Hearst manages to make a decent eInk device, it may be in a much better position to bring more content providers into the fold.