During an event in New York City this morning, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, unveiled a larger version of the company’s successful Kindle eBook reader. The new device, the Kindle DX, has a 9.7″ display that is about two and a half times larger than that of the Kindle 2. The Kindle DX will come with a built-in PDF reader, and features an auto-rotate mode, so that readers can easily switch between reading in portrait and landscape modes. The Kindle DX will cost $489 and is scheduled to ship this summer.
The resolution of the new Kindle’s screen is 1200 x 824 at 150ppi, while the Kindle 2 features a 600 x 800 screen. The Kindle DX also feature 4GB of memory.
Textbooks
As we predicted earlier this week, Amazon is aiming this device at the educational market and has reached deals with three major textbook publishers: Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage Learning.
Newspapers
Amazon also announced that the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post have signed deals with Amazon and that these papers will begin trials with reduced prices for Kindle DX users who agree to long-term subscription commitments later this summer. It looks like these discounts will only be available to users who live in areas where printed versions of these papers are not readily available.
During today’s event, the New York Times’ chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., argued that the new Kindle finally offers “the same satisfying experience as the reading of a printed newspaper.” It remains to be seen, though, if newspaper readers are indeed clamoring for a device that simply copies the experience of reading a traditional, dead-tree newspaper. It is also important to note that Sulzberger called the new deal with Amazon an “experiment,” and the success of this experiment will surely also depend on how much of a discount on the Kindle the papers are willing to give to their readers.
Not a Game-Changer
Judging from what we have seen so far, we don’t think that the Kindle DX will be a major game-changer in the eTextbook market or for the newspaper business. Besides the bigger screen, there is nothing really new in the Kindle DX, though having a native PDF reader will surely be useful to a lot of users.
The newspapers’ discount offer seems a bit timid, to say the least (though we still don’t have all the details yet). And we still have serious doubtsthat the Kindle is the ideal device for reading textbooks (though we have to admit that some of our readers are more enthusiastic about a large-screen Kindle for eTextbooks than we are).
