MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - It's not a real touch-screen

Charbax · 10-24-2008, 04:47 AM

Actually all the european carriers have roaming agreements already.

What seems to be the problem is that Amazon doesn't want to provide an unlocked HSDPA Kindle for Europe, where people can use any SIM card on any carrier.

They prefer locking people in, providing a seeming free wireless service where they monetize it by selling books.

Amazon should still be able to do that even with high roaming charges, they can just eigther block HSDPA in non-agreed roaming countries, or display a surchage warning if trying to download a book or otherwise downloading data when roaming in another country.

This should be a minor problem to fix for Amazon.

I think the reason Amazon is not selling more Kindles in the USA and Europe, is mainly cause the E-Ink screen manufacturer can only ramp up mass production of the screens at a certain rate. They are expanding production capacity of E-Ink screens as fast as they can during the past year, but still production capacity barely is enough to satisfy a small part of what the demand could be just for the USA. And sadly, the Taiwaneese E-Ink manufacturer probably didn't manage to build all those new factories yet, but they are working on it for Kindle 2, which should probably deliver 10x more production capacity then Kindle 1 did during this past year.

Also, Amazon wants to carefully deploy their own business models. I want to read this thread on my E-Ink reader, I want to read the whole Internet, all the blogs, all the forums and all the Google News articles and debates on an E-Ink screen, it's much better then reading all this text everyday using an LCD screen.

The browser will have a plugin and a shift click or right click feature that lets you select a bunch of pages and articles that are wirelessly beamed to your E-Ink reader.

Amazon though sadly for now seems to be focused on selling their own books only, instead of becoming a bandwidth reseller for all the webs text content. Though Amazon does know how to provide broad Internet cloud services, so I am confident, Amazon will provide an E-Ink device that not focus only on their book store (which whole business model could change completely with a new international copyright law).

10-24-2008, 04:47 AM	#25
Charbax Addict Posts: 203 Karma: 550683 Join Date: Mar 2007	Actually all the european carriers have roaming agreements already. What seems to be the problem is that Amazon doesn't want to provide an unlocked HSDPA Kindle for Europe, where people can use any SIM card on any carrier. They prefer locking people in, providing a seeming free wireless service where they monetize it by selling books. Amazon should still be able to do that even with high roaming charges, they can just eigther block HSDPA in non-agreed roaming countries, or display a surchage warning if trying to download a book or otherwise downloading data when roaming in another country. This should be a minor problem to fix for Amazon. I think the reason Amazon is not selling more Kindles in the USA and Europe, is mainly cause the E-Ink screen manufacturer can only ramp up mass production of the screens at a certain rate. They are expanding production capacity of E-Ink screens as fast as they can during the past year, but still production capacity barely is enough to satisfy a small part of what the demand could be just for the USA. And sadly, the Taiwaneese E-Ink manufacturer probably didn't manage to build all those new factories yet, but they are working on it for Kindle 2, which should probably deliver 10x more production capacity then Kindle 1 did during this past year. Also, Amazon wants to carefully deploy their own business models. I want to read this thread on my E-Ink reader, I want to read the whole Internet, all the blogs, all the forums and all the Google News articles and debates on an E-Ink screen, it's much better then reading all this text everyday using an LCD screen. The browser will have a plugin and a shift click or right click feature that lets you select a bunch of pages and articles that are wirelessly beamed to your E-Ink reader. Amazon though sadly for now seems to be focused on selling their own books only, instead of becoming a bandwidth reseller for all the webs text content. Though Amazon does know how to provide broad Internet cloud services, so I am confident, Amazon will provide an E-Ink device that not focus only on their book store (which whole business model could change completely with a new international copyright law).