next-generation Kindle

Sri Peruvemba, vice president of global sales and marketing at E Ink, recently stopped by our New York offices and talked displays and reminded us just how thin the e-ink screen for the Kindle and other e-readers is.

While he was showing off a "Triton" color e-ink prototype that's been making the rounds and piqued the interest of textbook publishers, we were more interested in what's up next for monochrome e-ink. Peruvemba couldn't speak about any new e-readers from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but he did say that the company's latest and greatest e-ink display, which goes by the name Pearl and was released last year (it's in the Kindle and Sony Readers but not the Nook), would be it for now; we shouldn't expect anything new in 2011.

"We're generally on a two-year cycle with our e-ink technology," he said. "It takes some time to develop and test the next generation." … Read more

Just as Apple's iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, Amazon wasn't the first company on the block to release an e-book reader--NuvoMedia's RocketBook and the early Sony Readers all beat the Kindle to market. But it's hard to argue that the online retailer's Kindle isn't the iPod of the e-book reader market. The Kindle has helped usher the e-book reader from gadget curiosity to a burgeoning mass-market device, all in less than three short years.

And now, amid a much more competitive market, Amazon is debuting the third-generation Kindle.

The first thing you … Read more