New York — Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, has introduced the much-awaited latest version of its jumbo-screen Kindle electronic reader device in a lecture hall Wednesday at the downtown Pace University.
Dubbed as Kindle DX, the new e-reader device is aimed at readers of personal and professional documents, newspapers, and magazines — and textbooks, a potentially huge target market.
Although the book is still open on whether the students and newspaper readers that Amazon is targeting will embrace the Kindle DX’s with a price tag of $489 — or whether the device will help strengthen the ailing media business.
According to Amazon’s Kindle DX page, the device has the following:
- A 9.7-inch display with 16 shades of gray. (As against the standard 6-inch display of Amazon’s Kindle 2.) The larger screen makes reading electronic versions of newspapers, magazines, textbooks, even sheet music, more practicable than on the $359 Kindle 2.
- Capacity to hold up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents.
- An auto-rotating screen to show either portrait or landscape views.
- A built-in PDF reader.
- 3G wireless network support with no monthly fees or annual contracts.
- Battery capacity to “read for days without charging.”
- Text-to-speech abilities to read publications aloud.
The release of the larger Kindle was not exactly a secret: rumors of a larger-screen Kindle had been around for quite some time, and concrete reports began to surface earlier this week.
Amazon’s Kindle DX (Credit: Amazon)
The DX is excellent for reading personal and professional documents that have charts, tables and graphs, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in an interview after the unveiling of the device here.
Is the price worth it? “At $489, that is a lot for a consumer to bear,” says Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at researcher NPD Group. Avi Greengart, mobile devices research director at Current Analysis, agrees: “Broadening the product line is usually a very good thing. But in this case, they are broadening the line up rather than down. And the line started at a very high price.”
The company anticipates that the new, larger Kindle DX model will widen the device’s reach beyond the traditional eBook market targeted by the smaller Kindle model. Many foresee that the Kindle DX would be geared in part toward helping out the struggling newspaper industry, and indeed, three newspapers will also be testing out the Kindle DX this summer in exchange for future product development help.
The publications participating are The New York Times, The Boston Globe (owned, and recently nearly shut down, by the New York Times Company), and The Washington Post.
“Personal and professional documents look pretty good on the big Kindle DX display that you will find yourself changing ink-toner cartridges less often,” said Bezos.
“Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks — anything highly formatted — also shine on the Kindle DX.”
Many of the features currently available in Kindle 2 are shared, but several are unique to the Kindle DX: The Kindle DX will also sport 3.3GB of memory and support for PDF files that does not require the files to be converted, the rotating display, the 3,500-publication capacity compared to 1,500 for the Kindle 2, and of course the larger screen.
“You never have to pan, you never have to zoom, you never have to scroll, you just see the documents,” Bezos said.
“Newspapers have been an absolute bestseller on Kindle,” Bezos said. “People love waking up in the morning to find that their New York Times, their Washington Post, their Wall Street Journal have all been ‘automatically’ delivered overnight. They like the fact that when they travel their subscription follows them around.”
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Company, said that the Times and the Globe will first be available on the Kindle DX in markets where home delivery is not available.
The Kindle DX showcases “our commitment to reinvention and to taking full advantage of digital media,” Sulzberger said, “which are providing a compelling laboratory for entrepreneurs, for technologists, and of course for journalists. The new Kindle DX is an important milestone in the convergence between print and digital.”
The Kindle DX retails for $489 (the standard Kindle is $359), and is available for pre-orders now on Amazon. It will ship this summer.