iRex DR1000 eBook reader community development kicks in

Over at the iRex company blog you can read in this post that explains how just after a week of them releasing their full-source-code to the open source community, they have seen the first "community developed" application (FBReader) released for the DR1000 eBook reader.

iRex are pushing a radically different model for their software platform with their recent open sourcing of their code, and it will be interesting to see:-

• how many, and which, applications get developed outside of iRex
• how iRex will handle rolling some of them back into the core platform they release or manage
  
• how they affect the iRex Illiad reading experience, if you have many different applications on it with different user interaction models, layouts etc.
• will it make anyone else consider taking this route? I can't see Sony doing it somehow.

Watch this space and I'll inform of developments.

Citi analyst predicts Kindle to be an even bigger hit

Original Post from August 12th 2008.

Here is another post predicting the future size of the Kindle business for Amazon, based on a few scanty sales rumors and bullishness.

This one is from Silicon Alley Insider reporting on Citi analyst Mark Mahaney (or was it Bark Baloney?) who predicts it will be a $1B business by 2010 (which confusingly they call "next year"), representing almost 4% of total Amazon revenue.

They show his calculations starting with original iPod sales numbers and a modified adoption rate for this device (for reasons they explain) and take it from there. For 2010 (the third year in their calculations) the device revenue and eBook (actually including newspapers and magazines?) sales revenue are about 50/50, although device revene recogniton is delayed and amortized over two years...

One, $10, book per device per month might turn out to be a little on the high side, but could be met if you count a few lower cost newspapers and magazines in the same month.

ARS Technica reports Kindle a $100M success for Amazon

Original post from August 4th 2008.

ARS Technica reports here that:

"According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold some 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated revenue between $86 million and $96 million dollars."

from sources via TechCrunch (original post here)

and they throw in a few speculations about a Kindle 2.0 for free.

Kindle stirs unease in book publishers at fair

Original Post from June 2nd 2008.

Amazon Kindle eReader creates a stir at the recent BookExpo America book show, partly due to a Jeff Bezoz keynote.

The fears expressed by book publishers (and resellers?) here sound to me like the digital music revolution all over again......

Find the original article here.

Steve Jobs is fake?

Original Post from February 1st 2008.

You may have heard about Steve Jobs' recent quotes about the end of reading, or read my previous blog entry entitled "Steve Jobs - the end of reading; Kindle non-event" on the subject.

The BBC reports on a recent Nielsen Online study about book purchases over the internet. It's true that this is only a small percentage of overall book sales (although growing) but the findings are interesting and positive in many ways.

The main points are:

• More books are sold on the internet than any other product (e.g. more than CDs, DVDs, cloths, electronics, etc!)
• The number is increasing (you could probably say this of internet purchases of a LOT of types of products)
• 41% of internet users had bought books online (that seems a lot!)
  

This is probably a good news for Amazon.

Another one bites the dust

Original Post from November 14th 2007.

You may have seen my previous blog entry on the demise of New York Times' pay-for content service called "The end for NYT's TimesSelect"

Well today marks the end of another pay-for-premium-content service, this time at the Wall Street Journal, as covered here by Cnet.com.

Ruport Murdoch buys into the idea of taking a smaller slice (via advertising I assume) of a MUCH larger pie (in terms of readers) by making the content free. For all of you who feel like you live in a corner of the world (see article) then you'd better check it out. Myself, as I live on the surface of a sphere, won't bother....