UPDATE: Thanks to this detailed post at the BlogKindle, I now know that the Kindle is NOT available in Pakistan. Anyone knows how to ‘jailbreak’ a Kindle? And does anyone know what exactly will NOT WORK when you turn on a Kindle, say in Karachi or Lahore?
It’s going to be about tablets. Apple still has a ‘time line to set‘ for the release of their tablet, whereas Microsoft has comfortably dropped a bomb in the shape of their Microsoft Courier (I think the Courier, when it does eventually come out, will do what Windows 95 did i.e. change the game completely. I am not alone).
Other, less ’snazzy’ brands like Dell and HP are also in the race, and ‘private investors’ like TechCrunch are well into the tablet game as well. The tablet wars, some are saying, are not coming but they are already here!
It’s not a PC, it’s not a Netbook nor a notebook, it’s not a tablet, it is …
But there is one market that no one has looked into and no one has bothered entering and as any entrepreneur would, I find that quite amusing: the digital book reader market. There is, really, only one; the Kindle. The argument can be that there are bigger fish to fry so no one is paying attention to the book readers market. It is shrinking anyways, right? Wrong, more books are being published than ever before, because there is a demand for it. (The newspapers industry is a different matter obviously).
But no one is as uniquely placed to get into this market as Amazon. The biggest online book seller thought, heck, if so many people are buying these books, maybe we can sell them a book reader too. They were right.
The Amazon Kindle is on my Wish List
Some very nifty features is the promised ‘no glare even in sunlight’ that makes reading on-the-go very much doable. The Kindle weights in less than a paper back and can carry more titles in its memory than you can wag a stick at.
But first, Kindle was only officially available in the US, now it is globally available. And according to Jeff Bezos himself, they also recently reduced the price of Kindle from 299 to 259 USD. (still expensive for someone who just wants a replacement for a book/magazines/newspaper though)
P.S. For those who are not ‘into’ reading books, even Nacho Libre knows, that you should go read some books.
I am Momekh and I am the guy behind this blog. I live in Lahore, Pakistan... 
There is also a DRM issue. All your books are on server, you can’t make a backup, copy your own ebooks on kindle or do anything with them (that is when I last checked, not sure if things have changed). There are quite a few people locked out of their entire collection. I am usually more trusty of big corporations than many other people, but I don’t think even I will like to have Amazon complete control over all my books.
Jailbroken Amazon, now that is something interesting. As a hardware it ’sounds’ amazing, and if I can have a complete control over my books (including ability to copy books on kindle I haven’t bought from Amazon) I would love to get my hands on one of them.
Hmm.. It’s a double post but after a quick search I realized I was wrong on few points in my last post. You can read other formats on kindle, and can transfer them directly from your PC too.
Most probably what I read was a rant of a user. Though Amazon did remotely delete a book from all kindle devices (which Amazon says it won’t do again) and few people were locked out of their amazon accounts, making them unable to buy any kindle book, or access the books they had already purchased. There is also a problem that if you break your Kindle or lose it, all your books become useless, unless you buy another kindle or get kindle’s iPhone application.
Seems like a ‘deal breaker’ to me :/
With Kindle, a lot of things are wrong here… hmmm
For example: 1. If I can’t ‘keep’ my library of books, then what did I pay for? A license to read only, more of a library pass? FAIL!
2. And if the books on Kindle can not be downloaded onto your PC to view as PDF or whatever, then this possibly is the most underrated case of unfair advantage out there. FAIL!
Thanks for the comments, Aqeel