Amazon Unfazed By Kindle’s LCD-Based Rivals, Bezos Says

Amazon remains upbeat about its Kindle business and is unfazed by the growing number of competing devices with LCD screens including the iPad, CEO Jeff Bezos told a shareholders meeting in Seattle Tuesday.

Bezos conceded it would be advantageous for the Kindle and other readers that use E Ink electronic ink displays to get color. “High-quality color” on reflective displays like those used on the Kindle are “still some ways out,” he said. It remains “technically very difficult” to bring color to devices with reflective displays, he said. Bezos said he has “seen some things in the laboratory, and there are several things in the laboratory” on that front, “but they're not quite ready for prime-time production."

Getting color on an LCD display like the iPad’s is “very, very easy” and that’s “the most mature technology” for color, Bezos said. But he said back-lit LCD displays come with “some significant drawbacks for long-format reading,” among them increased “eye strain because it’s sort of like reading with somebody shining a flashlight in your eyes, which is fine for short-form reading but if you really want to lay back and read for three hours it’s not the most comfortable reading experience.”

A second major problem with LCD displays, Bezos said, is “they are very power-hungry because they have to be back-lit, and so you get short battery life.” He said “the only way that we can get … two-week battery life the Kindle has is with the electronic paper reflective display.” A final major problem with LCD displays for e-book reading is that “they just don’t work in bright sunlight -- so, all the beach book reading, vacation reading, things like that, becomes very complicated, basically impossible with an LCD display,” he said.

The best way to compete against iPads and other multi-function devices with LCD screens is to remain a “very focused product” dedicated to e-book reading, Bezos said. Serious readers will prefer to have “a purpose-built device” like the Kindle for reading e-books, he said.

The Kindle DX pilot tests that Amazon conducted with students at five or six universities begun in the fall of 2009 (CED May 7/09 p2) have been “extremely effective” for gathering consumer feedback, Bezos said. There were “a half-dozen” schools in the test, he said Tuesday. Amazon cited five schools in announcing the plan last year: Case Western Reserve University, Arizona State University, Princeton University, Reed College and the University of Virginia. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Amazon learned from the feedback at the schools that heavy annotation is not easily done on Kindles now and could be improved, Bezos said. There also needs to be some way for users to locate the actual page numbers of books by using the already-supplied location numbers on the device, he said. Kindles at this time only provide location numbers for the digital pages of e-books. Bezos conceded that it’s often important for readers, especially for educational purposes, to know page numbers correlating to physical versions of the same books.

The first Kindle shipped about 30 months ago and Amazon has “sold millions” of them to date, Bezos said. The company had yet to offer a specific figure for how many units had been sold to date. “We're very excited about the future of” the Kindle business, Bezos said. The Kindle remains its No. 1-selling and gifted product, and is the product on Amazon.com with the most five-star reviews from customers, he said.

The Kindle e-book selection -- “even though we launched” the online Kindle store “less than three years ago -- has already grown from 90,000 best sellers at launch to over 540,000 best sellers today,” Bezos said. That figure “doesn’t even count the 1.8 million free out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books that are also available for Kindle,” he said. Kindle e-book downloads will be made available for Android devices in “just a few weeks,” he also said.

There is still room to add new product categories and new markets to Amazon.com, Bezos said. But he didn’t specify plans for any new categories and said the company remains focused on growing its current markets for now. In developing countries, it remains focused on China, he said. There is, however, “huge potential” in other developing countries, he conceded.