Recently, on the Mac Break Weekly podcast, Andy Ihnatko talked about how much he looooves the Amazon Kindle. Wow. He compared its impact in 2007 to that of the iPhone, and said that "the Kindle just really knocked one out of the park." Upon hearing this, my waiting-for-Muni ennui disappeared in a flash, and the volume on my iPhone went up a tick or two. Being pretty familiar with Andy's penchant for railing against half-baked technology (cough, cough, Zune), I was reasonably shocked to hear such a positive endorsement of what I consider to be an overpriced clunk of DRM-infested mediocrity.
First, a little background on the Kindle. Amazon is marketing the Kindle as an eBook reader with a black & white E Ink display and 3G cellular network access. The idea is that you'll buy eBooks and newspaper/blog subscriptions from Amazon which can be downloaded automatically to the Kindle via the Sprint network. They've included a little web browser, ostensibly to read blogs and other digital text on the net. According to Andy, it's definitely not Safari on the iPhone, but it's no worse than the browser experience you'd find on Windows Mobile, Blackberry or Treo (except, of course, in grayscale). In order to make the downloading of eBooks and blogs as seamless an experience as possible, and to avoid the need to side-load content from a PC, Amazon has provided each Kindle with the Sprint cellular data bandwidth for free, which is--admittedly--pretty cool.
It's this last little detail--the free 3G Internet access--that has Andy so excited about the product, and fair enough. If you look at the Kindle as a not-horrible grayscale mobile web navigator with a free Internet connection, then it's probably worth the $399 price tag. I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that this kind of usage for the Kindle is the dirty little secret that Amazon was hoping people wouldn't pay much attention to, which is probably why they downplayed this capability by burying the web browser under a menu labeled "Experimental". (In fairness to Andy, that "Experimental" label does seem to have him a bit concerned, and it should.)
See, Sprint is probably not donating this cellular data bandwidth for free. They're undoubtedly giving Amazon a hefty discount, but Amazon is most likely footing the bill for the 3G access because they're assuming (hoping? wishing?) that you're going to use that free bandwidth to download the overpriced $10-15 eBooks that you're buying for your Kindle from amazon.com. That's why they're marketing the Kindle as an eBook reader and not as a mobile web navigator with free, unlimited 3G cellular bandwidth (or as Andy so artfully put it, it's a humanoid android robot capable of autonomous action that's being marketed as a $400 waffle maker).
The last thing Amazon probably wants or needs is someone with the reach of Andy Ihnatko glossing over the less-than-sexy eBook aspect of the Kindle's business model, and telling everybody to instead think of this as the free 3G Internet machine. Oh, at first they won't mind because the Kindle will be selling, and it will look like the puzzle pieces of their business model are starting to fall into place. Any minute now, people will start buying lots of high-priced and proprietary Kindle eBooks and $2 blog subscriptions!
But, I have a prediction to make for the first half of 2008. As soon as Amazon starts to realize that people are using a lot more of that Sprint bandwidth than it takes to download the Kindle version of the New York Times every morning, that web browser with the free mobile Internet access is going to see its label change from "Experimental" to "Discontinued".
See, the Kindle is overpriced at $399, which leads me to believe that the profit margin on the hardware is not, shall we say...Apple-esque. If they could sell them for less without losing their shirts, they probably would. They're hoping to offset the cost of the hardware and the monthly Sprint bills by making their money on the content, which may not happen if people are using their Kindles as free mobile Internet tablets. I may be going out on a limb here, but getting a couple hundred bucks from someone up front in exchange for paying their unlimited 3G data bill for the rest of the device's life is probably not a good business model to pursue. I could be wrong, I don't have a business degree.
Oh, and if you thought the fallout from the $200 iPhone price drop was a bit frothy, just wait until Amazon takes away Andy's free Internet access!
