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.
Europeans wanting a mobile device for reading texts this Christmas might have to stick to a good old fashioned paperback. Certainly, the chances of Santa stuffing an Amazon Kindle in their stocking are slim to say the least.
Amazon put the electronic paper display driven Kindle
e-book reader on sale in the US nearly a year ago. It is keeping quiet
about sales figures, but the buzz online is that in excess of a
quarter million units have been shifted so far.
The success of the Kindle comes as little real
surprise, given the position Amazon holds in the bookseller market
these days. Throw that ready made, tech-savvy audience a delicious bone
in the form of a wireless, high-resolution, portable e-book reader
and they are almost guaranteed to start biting.
As long as they are in the US, that is. Over here in Europe we have
been patiently waiting for a chance to get out grubby little mitts on
the Kindle. Unfortunately it seems that the wait is to go on, and on. According to The Bookseller
which interviewed the Managing Director of Amazon UK, Brian McBride,
there will be no Kindle here until after Christmas.
Certainly the much rumoured European release date to coincide with the
Frankfurt Book fair last week was a non-event. And who is to blame for
the seemingly illogical delay between that successful US launch and a
European one?
Amazon says it is all down to the complexity of the wireless networking
carriers in Europe compared to the relative simplicity over in the
States.
McBride explains that to use the Kindle you need wireless access, if
you need a wireless carrier in the US there is an agreement with Sprint
EVDO (whispernet) which covers the entire country. "If you buy a Kindle
in the UK and want to read it on the beach on holiday in Spain" he says
"unless we have signed deals in Spain it is not going to work on that
beach."
So until Amazon has deals in place for Europe-Wide wireless coverage,
there will be no Euro Kindle. How long do we have to wait? According to
McBride that is not clear but likely to be "some time next year."
In the meantime, there are viable alternative devices, including the
best of all which has a long and proven track record: the paperback...
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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