Well, I was wrong. I thought the Kindle, like other attempts at e-books would be a failure. According a New York Times story by Saul Hansell (Aug. 12, 2008), The Lessons From the Kindles Success argues that while the market of readers may be small, there seem to be a enough readers who read a lot and want the convenience of loading it up on a device. I suspect the ease of use is also a feature.
It seems that Amazon.com’s Kindle is not the flop that many predicted when the e-book reader debuted last year. Citibank’s Mark Mahaney has just doubled his forecast of Kindle sales for the year to 380,000. He figures that Amazon’s sales of Kindle hardware and software will hit $1 billion by 2010.
I, in a rare moment of prescience, called it right. Like you, I’ve been following ebook readers for a long time. And like you, I thought this would be another failed attempt. But the first time I held a Kindle, I realized that this was it — because the really hard engineering problem (the screen) had been solved.
The Kindle isn’t perfect. There are some UI issues, some closed-network issues, formats and standards issues, etc., etc. But make no mistake; these are all minor issues in comparison to the screen. One look at the screen, and I was ready to make a prediction that I’m willing to stand by: namely, that books are doomed. Not today, or the day after, mind you. But the day will come when codex books are the province of antiquarians and cranks, and the Kindle is the very first breakthrough in that long, slow transformation.