Okay so I had this posted up, but then I took it down because I found out my college has rules against "self plagiarism" so ergo I could have gotten in trouble if I posted this somewhere before I turned the paper in. So I waited almost a month and here it is back again. I am particularly proud of this because the teacher let the Dean of Students at the University read it because he was considering buying the Amazon Kindle. I was very proud of this even before, but after I was told that I was ecstatic. Do also note that this has been run through turnitin.com an anti-plagiarism site, so be smart and don't plagiarize this; cite it if you want to get something out of this. So without further ado, my Emerging Technologies report from last semester.
Introduction
Since I can’t seem to shake the hype, created by Amazon’s flagship eBook reader, I’ve decided to do my report on an emerging technology that should be much better. The Amazon Kindling… I’m sorry the Amazon Kindle, has set the wireless eBook market back so far, it could be years before we have a product that does for books what the iPod did for music. As the holiday season approaches, I want to not only urge, but plead that people forgo buying the Kindle at this time. I’m not some anti-Amazon critic, nor am I a supporter of one of its competitors like Sony. Many people will be offended though, and what I’m saying will almost be heresy to Kindle owners, but I say, “Nay, this is not heresy; it is my love of the written word that be the muse to inspire these slanderous words.” So I implore you to take this report with a grain of salt, but please do listen what I have to say. As savvy consumers, it is our duty to help dictate the free market. We must demand better or we will never get it. It kind of reminds me of a fable I heard about an emperor who commissioned a tailor to make him a vibrant colorful garment, but when he got it he couldn’t see it and the tailor said, “Fools will not be able to see the garment” so everyone pretended like they did see it. I don’t remember exactly how it goes but when I get an eBook reader that costs less than most computers, I will be sure to buy it and read it to you all.
Price Tag
The price of Amazon Kindle’s second iteration has only recently dropped below $300 (to $259) despite being on the market since 2007 where it debuted at $399 (Metz, 2009). Keep in mind that you are not paying for books or unlimited book rentals; that is simply the device that allows you to buy and view Amazon’s books. But this is actually the more affordable option; the Kindle also has a DX model that is still closing in on $500 with a tag of $489 (Amazon.com, 2009). Straining to see exactly what made this more expensive, I noticed it has a bigger screen, more storage space (which is still only 4GB, 3.3GB available for downloads, 2GB more than the $259 one), “Rotating Display,” and supports PDF natively instead of after conversion… There isn’t $200 worth of content in those features; of course there really isn’t $259 worth of content in the Kindle to begin with. So why do these devices have such lofty price tags? Well, it isn’t because it costs that much to make them, it’s because it was trying to compete with the iPods. Apple commands high prices as it is, but it is much more understandable given the versatility, support, and overall design of the product. Simply walking in to the Apple store, the clerk was able to get 5 audible “wows” from me showing the features of the iPod touch. Not only that, but if you have a question about your iPod or iPhone you can log into a chat room with an Apple representative to get it resolved. The Kindle got 1 audible wow from me, due to the crisp high resolution on the print. So in no way do I find this product even comparable with the iPhone or iPod touch. Here is a fun fact; I paid less for my car than the debut price of every generation of the Kindle. And it’s not a piece of junk either; since I bought it I’ve put 100,000 miles on it. Just something to think about before you empty out your wallets at Amazon. It’s not just me being cheap either, a much smarter woman than I (a Forrester analyst named Sarah Rotman Epps), suggests its price should be around $99 (Metz, 2009). Believe me, if that were the case it would be a completely different presentation that you are hearing right now.
Kindle’s Effect on eBooks
So why should I care about what other people spend their money on? Well, what you do spend your money on directly affects me, if you keep buying $500 pieces of plastic then I will have to pay $500 to get that same piece of plastic. I really like the idea and I want one but I can’t afford to pay these prices because I’m not a wealthy oil tycoon. Why not just wait for another company to come out with the same thing? Because even competitors like Sony that are throwing themselves into the ring, realize that if the price is already so high, they can keep their costs high and still undercut the Kindle. It’s like how the judicial system works, how the judge rules in a unique case sets a “precedent” in which future similar cases can be sited for judgment in the same way. The same thing here, if a company arbitrarily sets its price too high but successfully sells it at that price then the competitors see they can charge that price and still turn a profit. One of the main reasons that, I believe, competitors are timid to enter the fray, is that Amazon has such a huge library at their disposal, it would be hard to compete with them, at least for a while. It is a shame that they were so greedy with their great potential. I could wait for Amazon to get their act together but it just seems unlikely that will happen. They don’t seem to fix, or care, what criticisms they get as we can see with the progressions through Kindle’s generations. I remember looking through their forums to try to understand why they made the already pretty cumbersome Kindle bigger for the DX model. I remember one snarky poster said that people were idiots for not realizing it was for people who like to read newspapers on their Kindles, before presumably returning to his $500 newspaper. But it is really strange to me that unlike all other electronics, the Kindles get bigger, heavier, and more expensive with every generation. Which leads me to speculate that the lead engineer for the Kindle is none other than… Bizarro Superman.
Substandard Engineering
I was reading a tech blog by a man named Robert Scoble and he brings up an interesting point, “UI sucks. Menus? Did they hire some out-of-work Microsoft employees?” (Scoble, 2007). For those of you unfamiliar, UI is user interface, the industry standard for most post-2007 devices like this should be a touch-screen especially at an upper-end price point. Scoble make another good point, the ergonomics of it lead people to grab it right where the page flip screen is. In fact there really aren’t many good places to hold it, the thing about books is that you have to hold them for hours, if there is no good way to do that, you might as well just have a paperback. There is also no back light for the screen, probably to conserve battery power, but that limits the usability of the device. If you can only read it where you have direct light, how is it any better than any printed book? The display is not in color, though I don’t really see that it needs to be, but they should take that into pricing considerations. It also uses a very cheap plastic casing, kind of like what you’d find on a very cheap children’s toy. And the warranty is bogus, it says 2-year but it’s really just an extension onto the 1-year manufacturer warranty. It covers only one claim for accidental drop or damage and doesn’t cover the replacement of the battery (leaving me to wonder what else could really happen to it). And as for firmware and software, you aren’t able to do anything unless Amazon says you can. Whereas if I want to get Tetris for my iPhone I can go on iTunes and pay $5 or whatever and get it. If I want a game that my friend made for the iPhone, I can get that too; if I’m savvy enough I can make a program for myself and even sell it on iTunes. For the Kindle, you can only have what Amazon says you can, there aren’t any programs or even expansion slots for 3rd party developers. But with the vast number of file formats it supports… it will definitely spurn the sales of Windows ’95. Take that Windows ’95!
Bezos the Businessman
I realize it’s not the prudent thing to do, calling the founder of the internet giant Amazon.com a bad business man, but really he’s not as good as most people say he is. Firstly he got into hot water when he engineered what would be called a “bricks-and-clicks partnership (a brick and mortar coupling with an online store)” (Wolk, 2006) with the toy store Toys “R” Us. In the agreement Toys “R” Us would use Amazon as the, “exclusive online retail outlet for Toys “R” Us toys, games and baby products” (Wolk, 2006). In the lawsuit Toys “R” Us thought that according to the agreement the reverse was true, that Amazon couldn’t sign on competitors like Target or zShops that sold the toys that Toys “R” Us sold, but they did anyway. The lawsuit ruled in favor of Toys “R” Us and people say it was better for Amazon because they could make more money hiring competing stores, but that’s not really the problem. The problem is that if you sign a contract that says you won’t take on other toy stores and you do it anyway, that’s just unethical. You may ask, “So what? He doesn’t like to honor contracts, what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that he has already done something like this with the Kindle. Amazon went on to people’s Kindles and removed people’s copies of George Orwell’s 1984 (among others) presumably in case for some reason they needed to remove the definition of irony from people’s dictionaries. Amazon’s communications director Drew Herdener said, “These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers,” (Megna, 2009). In case you were wondering, this goes against the Kindle’s Terms of Service: “Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon” (Fisher, 2009). But apart from being a blatant breach of the Terms of Service, this raises a whole bunch of questions. Firstly it doesn’t seem that the books are really yours, it seems like you are just renting them if they can take them away whenever they want. Or who is to say they don’t spy on your book purchases and turn them over to “Big Brother?” It’s something to consider when they don’t follow their contracts, or even their own rules that they made themselves.
Another thing that Bezos hasn’t quite figured out is “Razor Marketing” it’s what nearly every electronic media provider does to offset the costs of their devices. Cell phones, iPods, X-Box, Playstation, even your color printers all use this. The idea is, you give the main device away at a lower price than what it costs to make it, and you make the profit up on the backend with the add-ons. It’s called Razor Marketing because there were manufacturers of men’s shaving razors that realized it was a better idea to give the hand razor away for free, and make the money up when they buy the replacement blades. Your printer costs way more to make then you bought it for, but you buy the printer cartridges at a higher price and the company makes money; X-Box 360 and Playstation 3’s lose several hundreds of dollars on every machine they make, but when you buy the games at $60 a piece they eventually will turn a profit. Just think if 3 million people were able to afford a Kindle at $100 a pop and increased the cost of their books from $9.99 to $14.99; I think they would even make more money. They are the ideal candidate for Razor marketing, they have access to a monstrous library, eBooks don’t require printing, paper, bindings, or even shipping; you only have to encode them, which can’t be too hard because some 3rd party publishers are doing it for free. You just pay the authors and publishers their fee (they probably are already selling their print books on Amazon anyway) and the rest is profit! Even though I’m panning the Kindle, this is far and away the most successful Amazon flagship endeavor to date. They at one time had their own MP3 player and purchasing service like iTunes; also they had a streaming video player with a company called “Roku.” The fate of these products was that they were too expensive on the front end, for their performance, and so they weren’t successful. You may not have even heard of these products because they effectively get buried like a dead goldfish; soon they stop adding content, then they cut back on the support, and then eventually you are left holding the bag with the device that time forgot. In 2 or 3 years when some other company creates an industry standard eBook reader, will Bezos remember you dropped $500 on his overhyped piece of plastic, or will he be trying to sell books in his competitor’s format?
Kindle’s Good Points
I have been really hard on the Kindle, but it has some really good points. One of the things I really like is that you have 3G coverage for free, so no contracts no matter how long you stay connected. Although, there isn’t much besides shop for books that you can do with Kindle, it’s still a monthly hassle I think we can all do without. I heard you can get to Wikipedia and Google, but I’m pretty sure at this day and age even my coffee maker can get to Wikipedia and Google. As I said before when I first saw the Kindle I said, “wow” when I saw the extremely crisp 167 ppi (pixels per inch), honestly you don’t even have to be a techie to be impressed with that, you can see how crisp and clear it is at a glance. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a portable microfiche display. Another feature is that all books on the NY Times bestseller list are $9.99; but the high priced ones seem to be around $30 so with a savings of $20 you would still need to purchase 10-25 eBooks to offset the cost of the device. I don’t know many people who would be able to do this within the shelf life of the Kindle. Another feature I really like is the “Read-to-Me” feature so that you can listen to it like a book tape when you’re in the car and then when you get out you can start reading again from the same point that the device left off. I, unfortunately, was not able to see this feature in action, so I don’t know if it’s a human voice or a computer voice (I would be really bummed if it’s a computer voice). Another great feature is the annotation feature, which I’ve heard is the best; I again was not able to do this on some other person’s Kindle for obvious reasons. But I did hear that when they spirit your copy of 1984 away they leave your annotations in a folder, out of context like a pile of post-it notes that fell off your file cabinets. Can you imagine highlighting and putting notes from the text book for this class and then without warning, poof, they are all gone? In conclusion, while the Kindle is an interesting gadget, it’s nowhere near where it should be. And if we continue to buy it, Amazon will not ever see the need to lower the price or fix nagging problems. Amazon knows online stores, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to make electronics. Any questions?
Bibliography
Amazon.com. (2009). Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device (9.7" Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation). Retrieved November 10, 2009, from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015TCML0/ref=kinww_ddp
Fisher, K. (2009, July 17). Why Amazon went Big Brother on some Kindle e-books. Retrieved November 14, 2009, from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles.ars
Megna, M. (2009, July 20). Amazon's Irony: Orwellian Recall of Kindle Books. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from internetnews.com: http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3830861/Amazons+Irony+Orwellian+Recall+of+Kindle+Books.htm
Metz, R. (2009, October 7). Amazon cuts Kindle price, adds global version. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33208339/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets
Scoble, R. (2007, November 25). Dear Jeff Bezos (one-week Kindle review). Retrieved November 11, 2009, from Scobleizer: http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/25/dear-jeff-bezos-one-week-kindle-review/
Wolk, M. (2006, March 2). Toys 'R' Us wins suit against Amazon.com. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11641703/
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