Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Sometimes you've just got to wonder at the gullibility of the news media - yes the media, not the public, which collectively is actually pretty smart. The headlines are blazing "Kindle out of stock". Yes, that's right. Amazon's new e-reader product is out of stock so you better get your US$399 order in quick or you'll miss out on your chance to spend your Christmas bonus on a product that enables you to buy e-books from Amazon. The burning question is how much did Amazon have in stock in the first place?
Let's have a little honesty here. We're not
talking about an iPod, iPhone, Wii, PS3 or even an Xbox 360. We're
talking about an e-reader, an expensive monochrome handheld device that
lets you download a limited range of online books, as well as some
newspapers and blogs. What's more, whatever you download is going to
cost you quite a lot considering that you can only read it on the
Kindle.
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?
David Bass
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