My first foray into the world of blogging. Man am I nervous. I was just reading an interesting article on Amazon and their decision to keep the Kindle architecture closed. It appears Amazon thinks they have a winner take all product that will be the eventual choice of all readers in a similar way that the iPod has become the product of choice for any self respecting music fan. By not embracing open e-book standards are they making themselves vulnerable to competition or have they already taken the market never to look back?
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I think one of the reasons for iPod's success was its sex appeal and the immense branding and advertisement.
ReplyDeleteBut with the reader things are different. I think with the close architecture they are closing the door to innovation and limiting themselves to the functionality that is currently offered.
With other similar products floating around and the acceptability still questionable, I think an open architecture would have benefited them even more.
This is a tough call . . . Amazon's core business is e-commerce and Kindle is supposed to complement it. This works with a closed architecture but not so well with an open architecture, since 1) people could obviously get content from other sources and 2) an open architecture could encourage piracy, which has killed the music industry and can harm Amazon in a similar way.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting issue related to this is what happens to publishers if an open architecture becomes standard? Authors could then easily generate their own content, and the publishers could be finished.
Amazon is letting the publishers decide on the DRM setting of the content.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/amazons-e-books.html