At the Wired Conference in New York City last year Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, talked about his strategy for the Kindle. He described it as two-pronged. First is to make sure that Amazon content is readable on all the various devices in the market. The other prong is to make the Kindle competitive versus all the other devices. Sounded good to me but I wonder what he knew about the yet to be rumored iPad at that time. Seems to me his strategy is missing some ingredients.
As the novelty of the glitzy iBook reader wore off I concluded that the best way to obtain books is from Amazon. I read them on the Kindle, on the iPhone, and on the Kindle app on the iPad. At first this seemed like the best of all worlds — but is it? It certainly could be. The issue that has become clear, at least from my perspective, through more and more reading is that the Kindle app on the iPad does not have the full functionality of the Kindle device. For example the built in dictionary on the Kindle is not part of the Kindle app on the iPad. The function to move books from the Kindle archive to the Kindle home section is not present. The Kindle allows reading newspapers and magazines. The Kindle app does not.
The conclusion I draw from the above is that there is a prong missing from Jeff’s strategy. To be successful he needs the best content, the best device, and the best Kindle app on other devices. Without all thes elements people will be tempted to use the iBook reader instead of the Kindle app and then Amazon will lose both the Kindle loyalty and the book sales. It is somewhat of a dilemma because if in fact the Kindle app on the iPad is as good as the Kindle then why will people buy the Kindle? Sorry, Amazon, nobody said it would be easy!