Will Amazon's Kindle Fall to the New Generation of Slate Devices?

With the recent announcement and ultimate arrival of Apple's iPad, the interest in touch screen, pad style keyboard-less devices has grown significantly. Consumers can expect a wide array of devices to arrive in stores soon from the various top manufacturers, such as Hewlett Packard's Slate, due out in the summer of 2010. With the pad style devices gaining popularity as a mainstream do all device, questions, reports and rumors have been appearing online in regards to the future of the device that once originally peaked consumers' interest, the Amazon Kindle.

The original amazon Kindle was released in late 2007, and was widely known to have sold out within approximately five hours. Adding insult to injury, the first Kindle was then unavailable and out of stock for almost half a year. The original Kindle, although useful for reading digital text and e-book content, really was limited device in terms of memory, and wireless access and other features.

After the first Kindle became available, popularity and demand initiated the release of the second Amazon Kindle unit, in the first part of 2009. The new device featured significant upgrades compared to its predecessor; however at an original price point close to $400, and only being a device that primarily displays text, it was still surely considered a luxury opposed to a necessity by many. After a few price reductions, and the eventual introduction of the Kindle 2 international version, the pad style digital e-book reader would ultimately appeal to a wider user base.

Released in Mid-summer 2009, the Kindle DX (and DX international) arrived on the scene, again with feature enhancements, and even more notably, an internal accelerometer which allowed content to be displayed in portrait or landscape mode simply by turning the device appropriately.

That brings us to present time. The iPad has arrived, the HP Slate is around the corner, and other PC manufacturers including Dell, and Asus, have similar devices in the works as well. Kindle 3 is also reportedly on the way. In recent articles, media outlets including PC World, and Daily Finance have reported that the Kindle 3 will be available for purchase in August 2010. For Kindle fans, the word is that the device will still lack modern features such as a color screen, and touch screen input.

In defense of the Kindle; yes it is simply designed as an e-book reader; all of the modern bells and whistles aren't necessary. Although this may be true, the issue lies in the retail price-point in a market of tough competition with more powerful devices. Naturally, if the Kindle supports improved and newer technology, it becomes more expensive.

With devices similar in size that are ready to read Kindle content (with software such as Amazon's free Kindle software for Windows 7, and the iPad), it could become a bumpy road ahead for Kindle.

References:

Kindle on Wikipedia
PC World
DailyFinance