Quote:
Originally Posted by evanft
What I'm guessing:
Basic Kindle
Will remain largely the same. Will probably not go to a touch or PW screen. I could maybe see them going to a higher res screen, but I doubt it. The big thing is going to be price point. I would not be shocked at all if they pushed the price to $49.99. That may hit a psychological barrier for a lot of people that makes it easier to buy one.
Kindle Paperwhite
Overall improvements in lighting evenness and contrast, mostly addressing issues with current model. I don't think they'll match the Aura's screen, though. I could also see a price drop to $100 in order to reduce gap with basic model.
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I agree with you. Based on the recent news/rumors it looks like at this point Amazon is much more interested in their new projects which are largely Android-based - phone, tv, tablets. In the e-reader area I am not expecting anything more drastic than marginal improvements/fixes in hardware (faster cpu, more memory, etc), some improvements/fixes in software (which are directly revenue-generating), and/or lower price. I think lower price is the highest priority, the e-reader market is pretty much saturated and in order to sell more readers en masse they'd need to go after those who still don't have one yet - meaning _very_ casual readers. So I fully expect, say, $25 (or less!) for basic Kindle.
As far as major improvements go, there has been only a few innovations in e-ink area recently, namely flexible screens and color e-ink (HD is not new any more). Amazon experimented with color e-ink (Triton) in the past and wasn't impressed with the quality. I also think the primary audience for the color screens - magazine readers - is pretty much satisfied with tablets (and bought them already).
The flexible screens are much more interesting, but unless they can make truly revolutionary device with fully folding/rolling-up screen so the device when closed is the size of a smartphone/pencil - again I don't see that happening.
The Kobo Aura HD is kind of a signal that there is nothing really in the pipeline for the e-ink screens (ok, its dpi is higher) and the only "major" improvement could be the bigger size. Let us not forget that the Aura's screens are the batch abandoned by BN so they also both didn't have anything else (but size) to offer and didn't think that enough people would want to buy it.
Me, I am ready to jump my Kindle Keyboard ship, just waiting for the kindlepdfviewer to be ported to Aura HD
