Apple iSlate vs. Amazon Kindle: eBook Steel Cage Match!?

The Apple rumor mill is now projecting that all the activity around an overgrown iPhone-like device will not be an Apple "netbook", or tablet computer, but rather an eBook reader, set to compete with the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. Supposedly called the iSlate (yeesh...), the Apple reader will have a separate part of the App store dedicated to eBooks for the device.

This makes a lot of sense, in the wake of certain publishers who have released their book publications as iPhone apps, rather than as PDFs, Kindle Books (.azw format), or .mobi (MobiPocket format). The advantage of this for Apple is that it leverages their current iPhone/iTunes Store momentum and infrastructure, while maintaining ease-of-use for customers. It does, however, mean more VHS/Betamax format wars for consumers.

Right now, it looks like Mobipocket and other formats, used by open-book readers like Sony, the Nook, Philips', and others, are fighting an uphill battle, at least in the U.S. The Big 3 in the electronic publishing industry are PDF, MobiPocket, Kindle Books. But even though an iPhone app is not really a file format, is is a method of delivery, which is ultimately what the file formats allow. Amazon and the iTunes Store offer convenience of delivery, sync, and portability, while PDFs offer print options and ubiquity due to a 15-year head start. Since Amazon purchased Stanza, buying books from the Fictionwise book store has become more disjointed and harder to do. IPhone app-books, in contrast, are becoming easier and easier to download. Another advantage for iTS users is that they can purchase their audiobooks from the same place, to the same devices. Amazon's Kindle does "read" certain books to you, but reviews of the auto-reader are mixed.

No doubt Android (Google's smartphone OS) will be incorporating app-books into it's store soon, if it has not already. That, together with Google's recent eBook moves and it's ginormous search-engine audience, could be the beginning of a slow death of Amazon's initial raison d'etre. I foresee an Apple vs. Google fight to the death in most consumer information markets, including eBooks.

Good thing Amazon has leveraged it's cloud computing and fulfillment infrastructure into separate businesses. Wonder what Microsoft is up to?

More Kindle competition

My buddy Barton just sent me this link. Seems like Plastic Logic, powered by a Barnes & Noble bookstore back-end, is the Kindle's latest competition.

Watch the demo videos, and observe the graphic goodness and touch screen awesomeness.

iPhone ebook reader

I've been wondering about getting a Kindle, especially in light of just having moved my heavy, boxed-up book collection to a new house. Ouch, my back! But the $400 price tag is a real barrier for me, and the utility of having just one mobile device for phone calls, contacts, calendars, Web surfing, iPod (music, movies, audiobooks), and various other data and applications is hard to give up.

The iPhone's answer to the Sony eBook Reader and Amazon's Kindle is Stanza, an application which allows eBooks of various formats to be saved natively and read on the iPhone, even without an Internet or network connection. It also allows direct downloads from many different publishers. But the form factor for reading is smaller than the Kindle or eBook Reader. So the question remains: To Kindle, or Not to Kindle?

The author of this article makes an excellent point:

[T]he ebook is software and I have little doubt that I’m right about this. There will be some people who are prepared to buy a Kindle (or the Sony equivalent) in order to have a device that’s purpose-built for reading books. But if you can get equivalent functionality from an iPhone or iPod, then you’re not going to be happy to pay over $300 for the Kindle just for the privilege of buying ebooks. If ebooks were difficult to read on the iPhone/iPod then Stanza would already be dead in the water, but that’s not the case.

There’s already a Beta version for Google Android and one will likely be developed for RIM. There are also versions for the Mac and Windows...

So for a time there were purpose-built wordprocessing devices, but it quickly became obvious that word processing was a software app, and the word-processing devices went the way of the dodo.

Amazon missed a golden opportunity to leverage both their brand and the popularity of the iPhone (and Google's Android, for that matter) by not launching an ebook reader application of their own. They could have totally pre-empted Stanza. But now they have allowed Stanza to get a significant market jump on them in the software e-reader market, one that may be too much to oevercome.

I think I'll stick with my iPhone and Stanza for a while, thanks, Amazon.

To Kindle or not to Kindle?

I've been contemplating purchase of the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but I don't know if I like the idea of yet another device locking me into a proprietary format for my digital purchases.

This review looked fairly complete and honest to me, and I was wondering if anyone else has used the Kindle, and would mind sharing their experiences here in the comments?

Talk amongst yerselves.