Rekindling Amazon’s Kindle E-Book Reader

By no means am I an earlier adopter of cutting edge technology when it is first released. I find that the initial price for a new product is usually a lot more than what I am willing to pay for it and I almost always want to see the kinks worked out before I snap up what I hope will become an eventual bargain.

Yet, I remain intrigued by Amazon whose electronic-book reader, Kindle, seems to be getting a lot of attention by technogeeks lately as well as by the literati who seem to be embracing the technology.

The All New Kindle DX

On Wednesday, Amazon rolled out a larger e-book reader, dubbed the Kindle DX, this version making it easier to read textbooks and newspapers. Best of all, the Kindle DX’s screen is about the size of a standard sheet of paper, making it easier to see what is featured.

Critics are saying that the Kindle DX is too pricey (retail price is $489) as well as too limiting, especially when compared with the $199 Apple iPhone which can show videos and color images. Despite its black and white imagery, Amazon is quick to point out that it doesn’t come with a pricey two-year service contract ala the iPhone.

Kindle Editions Of Some Of Your Favorite Newspapers

Amazon may have found willing partners for the Kindle DX in the form of some of our largest newspapers. Indeed, the Boston Globe, Washington Post and The New York Times have Kindle editions of their newspapers already in place, the larger format is likely to appeal to customers. Thus, these same newspapers will test sale the Kindle DX to people who subscribe to the Kindle edition of their newspapers.

Colleges and universities may soon become some of the biggest fans of the Kindle DX as a number of textbook publishers, including Pearson PLC, plan to sell their textbooks on the Kindle DX. The “kindlized” titles have yet to be announced nor prices determined, but it is a start.

Amazon also announced partnerships with five universities which would give some students access to the the Kindle DX for the upcoming academic year in lieu of purchasing textbooks. Details on how that would work out haven’t been announced.

Important Features Found In The Kindle DX

Among the many features and attributes of the Kindle DX include the following:

Super thin — about a third of an inch thick (or thin?), the Kindle DX is actually narrower than the average magazine.

Built-in PDF reader – all of your personal and professional documents can be read on screen with no need to rotate or flip pages.

Lots of memory — 3.3G of memory is available on the Kindle DX which Amazon says translates into 3500 books.

Auto rotation — Kindle DX’s display content auto-rotates so users can read in portrait or landscape mode, or flip the device to read with either hand. Simply turn Kindle DX and immediately see full-width landscape views of maps, graphs, tables, images, and Web pages.

My only concern about the Kindle DX is taking it somewhere, such as the beach, where sand could get in and mess up the unit. Then again, I can’t think of the last time I actually brought a newspaper, magazine or book with me to the beach, preferring to do the bulk of my reading inside and away from direct sunlight unlike the avid reader featured above.

The Kindle DX is scheduled to go on sale this summer.

Related Reading — Daily News & the Decline of the Print Media

Amazon.com contributed some of the information contained in this story.

Ebay Plans To Rid Itself of Skype

Ebay, Inc. has been in the news a lot lately, most recently for its sale of StumbleUpon (SU) — the online recommendation site — back to its original owners for an undisclosed sum. Ebay acquired SU in 2007, a move that was widely panned by SU devotees. Now, Ebay is looking to unload another acquisition, this time its internet-calling unit, Skype. By 2010 Ebay plans to hold an IPO or Initial Public Offering, which will separate Skype from its parent.

The Many Brands of Ebay

Ebay, Inc., which is best known for its online auction site bearing the same name, has ventured well beyond its base since being founded in 1995. Like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other big internet names, Ebay has acquired quite a few companies over the years including Half.com, Paypal, a portion of Craiglist, StubHub, Shopping.com and others. Some of the acquisitions have been a very good fit, such as Paypal, while others have been nothing but trouble. Skype falls into the latter category.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Ebay is selling Skype in response to investor demands to rid itself of the unprofitable business. Ebay purchased Skype for $2.6 billion in cash in stock in 2005, but took a $1.4 billion write off in 2007 to reflect the unit’s diminished value. When John Donahue took over Ebay in 2008, he announced that Skype seemed to be a poor fit with the rest of the company’s business, signaling that its sale was forthcoming.

Goldman Sachs to Oversee IPO

Ebay has hired the prestigious Goldman Sachs Group to handle the public offering which is expected to be held in early 2010. Skye’s founders – Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis – have attempted to buy Skype back from Ebay, but their price was well below what Ebay wanted for the unit. When the IPO is held next year, Ebay says that it will remain a shareholder in the new company.

The WSJ says that waiting until next year to hold an IPO for Skype may work to Ebay’s advantage, especially given the current state of the economy where the IPO market has largely been dormant since last summer. But, the newspaper also says that investors may be leery about investing in Skype given the bad experience many had when Clearwire Corp. had their own IPO in 2007. Back then, Clearwire fetched $25 a share, but was later merged with a Sprint unit.  Clearwire investors were clearly burned in the transaction as their stock values dropped to about $20 per share when all was said and done.

As for Skype, the unit continues to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars annually in revenue, charging just 2.1 cents per minute for users to call landlines while offering free calls to other Skype users in most instances. Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of Skype is that the service now claims more than 400 million users worldwide.

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