| Kindle out of stock? How much inventory Amazon? |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Friday, 23 November 2007 | |
  
Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
For most book readers, who don't wish to entrust a library of 200 novels to the idiosyncracies of a handheld device, the Kindle is about as useful as mammary glands on a male bovine quadruped. Yet Amazon is sold out, so you better get your order in quick! Of course, Amazon is not telling anyone how many Kindle readers have actually been sold. Why not? If they're now out of stock, then surely this is a remarkable opportunity for Amazon to tout the success of this device. Come on Amazon, don't be modest, don't hold back, tell the world how many Kindle readers you've shifted. It's no accident that e-readers to date have been abject failures in the market place. They're not as good as the books they want to replace. They don't have the longevity, they can't be loaned or exchanged, they need batteries and maintenance and they don't add value to the reading experience, They're not multimedia devices; they're just words on screens. Yes, you can store 200 books on a Kindle but who needs to? Yes, you can download a US$10 book from Amazon, when you happen to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot that doesn't charge you to access the network. You can also order books online or go to a bookstore or airport newstand and get a hardcopy book that you can keep forever and pass on to your children. Most people to date have opted for the latter. Amazon has had remarkable success as an online bookseller. You can get hardcopy books from Amazon that you can't find in your local bookstore. Surely that should tell the company something. People who like to read long chunks of prose, like books. Frankly, Amazon seems to do well when it sticks to its knitting. It's good at selling and shipping tangible products like books, DVDs and games consoles. Its efforts at shipping bits and bytes have so far been mediocre at best. As far as Kindle is concerned, it's a bad idea whose time will never come. Saying it's so, won't make it so. Once again, how many Kindle readers have actually been sold? |
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