Could iPhone smoke the Kindle?

I wanted a Kindle. I was ready to buy a Kindle. The iPhone spoiled everything.

Amazon's Kindle sells for $365.

(Credit: Amazon)

I'm an avid reader of digital books and for months I had my eye on the Kindle, the digital reader from Amazon, with its high-contrast screen and PC-less book downloads. Then Apple announced that the iPhone 3G goes on sale July 11.

I'm now in second-guess hell.

I know Apple has said nothing about offering an e-reading application for the new iPhone. But what happens if Steve Jobs later surprises us or some developer turns the iPhone into a whiz-bang electronic reader? I'll tell you what happens, my Kindle ends up on eBay.

I can imagine a slick iTunes bookstore, stocked full of titles that are easy to buy and download--sort of like Amazon.com. Even if Apple decides against getting into book sales, the upgraded iPhone will be open to developers. I'm betting one has already written an e-reader application.

There's a huge opportunity here for some enterprising developer. The person could write a reader application for the iPhone and then sign licensing deals with top publishers. The developer could sell digital books out of their own Web store. The pitch to the publishers would be: "I have the best way for you to get on the iPhone."

Of course, if Apple, which possesses complete control over the iPhone application development program, is planning something similar down the line, then a third-party e-reader application might not pass. Last January, Jobs voiced skepticism about e-readers, telling The New York Times that people "don't read anymore."

This to some is a good indication that he's interested.

The iPhone offers more value than the Kindle.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Regardless, all of this highlights the main problem with the Kindle: it's too much of a specialty device to appeal to a mass market audience. People want more value than the Kindle offers.

Sure, Amazon's the iPhone when it comes to providing a better reading experience. The Kindle features a 6-inch screen and E Ink technology, which is easier on the eyes than backlit displays. But the iPhone has all it needs to become a great digital-book reader: a 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display and 480-by-320 resolution.

I've read close to 20 books on my Palm Pilot TX and its 3.8-inch screen is plenty big enough.

Certainly, the Kindle's advantages as an e-reader aren't enough to trump the host of iPhone features: a phone on a new faster network, camera, video player, it holds photos, contacts, you can play games and there's the apps we don't know about yet. With the Kindle I get Web browsing and e-mail.

When you size up bang for the buck, it's all iPhone. The 16GB iPhone 3G costs $299. Of course that doesn't include network charges. The Kindle sells for $365 and that includes free wireless.

Brett Arends at The Wall Street Journal argues that if you read a lot, the Kindle can help you save money because e-books are cheaper than the paper kind. But he acknowledges that you have to buy 61 books before the device pays for itself.

Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein predicts that global e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by 2012. If he's right, I'm thinking many of those sales won't be for the Kindle.

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh and Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

[DKrudop]

[vkoser]

I have some of the same thoughts but have a real problem with some things the iPhone does not have, like local storage, copy/paste etc....

Some more thoughts about the lack of local user storage plus how it might effect the application store applications can be found on a longer post on my blog http://www.kosertech.com/blog/?p=74

[frankenbeans]

I think you have overlooked a big problem. You will kill the iPhone's battery too quickly using it for reading. It's backlit screen will drink it's own milkshake.

[meski.oz]

It must have a manifestly inadequate battery then. I use a HTC touch phone (aka the iPhone killer) and I get hours of reading out of it. Four plus, at a guestimate.

[Thomas, David]

I'm not sure that's true, I use mine ALL the time for reading web pages, and I don't have that problem.

As a matter of fact, since the iPhone is the top phone enabled device browsing the internet, your argument fails. There is not difference from reading a web page, versus reading a book page. My bet is an e-reader application would be web-enabled, unless (like the author suggested), Apple is able to ink deals with publishers to provide the books as content.

Books take up far less space than audio, or video content. So storage, as one commenter suggested would be a problem, would NOT be a problem. The only issue I see, is how the stop-start application hinders copy/paste unless the new SDK supports allocation of static memory to go between applications. My bet is this is possible now, but deciding on how the user interface for that should work is holding it up.

[Sean_Anderson]

Haven't you heard? This could settle your dilemma: http://code.google.com/p/iphoneebooks/

[apdicaprio]

Two very different devices with very different purposes. You can read books on the old iphone but the kindle is a pupose built reader. The iPhone is continually redrawing the screen using power while the kindle has set the screen (think sort of like those magnetic drawing toys). If you are going to read for several hours, get a kindle, if you are going to read a couple news pages, get an iphone

[meski.oz]

Whether that is better depends on a couple of things - how fast you read (I hit the next page key about every 1.5 seconds or so) and the power taken to do an erase/redraw. I'd be annoyed if it were a slow redraw, too - what's the speed like?

[CyberBob859]

While you may have read 20 e-books on your Palm, I tried reading just a couple of e-books on my Treo and gave up because I didn't enjoy it.

Which brings me to my point. You may be able to read e-books on an iPhone in the future, but that won't be the reason to buy it. If the experience is better on the Kindle, I'll use a Kindle. Especially if I can also buy an e-book from the Kindle and download to it directly, and store it on the device.

And with Amazon also being competitive with MP3's and their recent purchase of Audible.com, maybe the better thing to do is buy a cheap cell phone from any carrier, and put everything else on the Kindle.

[gnostalgia]

Cripes - you have been able to do this on Windows Moble foreeeeeeever with Microsoft Reader. Also Palm-based devices, if you include Mobibook/Mobi Reader.

Can we not act like something is new and radical because it *might someday* be offered on the iPhone?

[Perry_Clease]

Good point because there are no eBook readers for the Mac

/snark

[sjschaef]

Thank you.. I like apple products and own a few.. but this happens all too often... If something is or might be offered on the iPhone then it becomes revolutionary, amazing or ground breaking. I have read an ebook or two on my Dell Axim over 5 years ago.

I was waiting for the Kindle to drop in price.. I am going to wait a few more months to see if any new hardware features come out.. then I am going to buy it.

[b_baggins]

Maybe it has to do with the fact that the iPhone display is resolution independent and 150 DPI, so your ebook doesn't look like crap.

This has been said before, but bears repeating. Apple's genius isn't WHAT they do, it's HOW they do it.

[friscosooner]

The lack of a decent reader app like Microsoft Reader (my favorite and I've tried quite a few) is why I will stick with WM5 for my phone at least until Android shows up. I read almost 100% of my books on my HTC Wizard. I also like how Microsoft has an add-in for Word that will convert Word docs to LIT format. Until Apple or Android can match that I'll stick with what I've got. Besides, carrying my phone along with my Nano isn't that big of a deal.

[meski.oz]

eReader is better, IMO, because of the DRM Microsoft reader uses. I change PCs often enough to run out of DRM keys, and have to reapply, and I worry that MS won't bother supporting this to the reasonable life of a book

[gerrrg]

I seriously doubt that either the iPhone or the Kindle are THE form factors that will push electronic book reading over the edge and into popularity. I'm going to wait until someone has come up with bi-fold OLED panels, 5x7 sized, that has a touch surface and will also serve as wireless net-surfing devices.

[nowheres]

Now that we all have to be hands free when we are driving, they could put a phone in the Kindle with blue tooth and we'd have all this functionality in one product.

[rcrusoe]

I've got an iPhone, and I love it, but have no interest in reading books on it. I want a Kindle but I'm waiting for Kindle 2.0. You know, the Kindle that doesn't look like it belongs in a discount bin at Walmart with all the other crappy Chinese electronics that no one will buy.

[tohardik]

dude, if you've been keeping an eye on Kindle, you'll know that no e-reader application on i-phone can come close to Kindle; the readability on the Kindle is awesome, that is if you want to really read a book and not just skim over it (for which iphone might just be okay).

[meski.oz]

You have a point that a device made for reading a book is likely to be better, but do you carry your kindle everywhere? (like you probably do your mobile phone)

[trevorbsmith]

I've been saying for over 10 yrs that the world is ready for a really good, really cheap, really simple electronic book. The trick is it needs to be dead simple and shouldn't even try to do much more than a paper book does. People want to read, they don't want to play with computers. I imagined that it would have very few buttons, maybe a next/previous and one or 2 others. I also imagined that if anyone knew how to really make such a product great, it would be Apple. Then Apple did one better than my idea: they released the iPhone. It's not quite big enough and there are a few other draw backs (price) BUT the interface is brilliant: multi-touch could let you "flip" through pages of an e-book, just like you would with a paper one. Plus there are even fewer "hard" buttons on the iPhone than I imagined on an electronic book reader. The final beauty of the iPhone: we're all moving toward smart phones so why would someone pay even a reasonable price (say $25 - $50) for a reader when they already have an iPhone? Answer: they won't.

gerrrg has a good point in his comment here though: iPhone won't be the form factor to really catalyse e-books; the screen needs to be bigger and readable in bright sun. I saw some interesting technology that mimics colour the way butterfly wings do somewhere. It requires no backlight and is fast to update and does great colour. If that ever comes to mass market, (especially if it's a bigger, readable size) it will be the ideal screen for an ebook--make it foldable and it will be a great iPhone too...

[chlimouj]

Could iPhone smoke the Space Shuttle?

Sorry, but it's ridiculous to even discuss the iPhone and the Kindle in the same article. The screen is what makes the Kindle a viable product. It's not the first e-book reader to ever be invented... the rest fell into oblivion because they couldn't provide enough necessary benefits to convince someone to deal with staring at a backlit screen. Unless the iPhone wants to abandon multimedia OR Apple invented a fast-motion full-color version of e-ink technology (but really, when was the last time Apple ever invented anything more useful than their click-wheel?), this is all nothing but a wet-dream for Applephiles.

BTW- Does Microsoft still own the patent on the click-wheel? What ever happened with that?

[Perry_Clease]

"but really, when was the last time Apple ever invented anything more useful than their click-wheel...Does Microsoft still own the patent on the click-wheel? What ever happened with that"

It is right THERE with THEIR patent for THEIR first DOS.

[modestexcuse]

I just wanted to add, that anyone who currently owns a jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone most likely knows that in the installer, you can download an ebook/reader app. It works really well. I have never even questioned getting a Kindle. The writer of the article really should have done their homework.

[Philstera]

What a ridiculour article next thing this guy will be saying Could Iphone smoke etchasketch? or the blackboard. Just grow a brain and write an intelligent article based on facts instead of could have beens

[clashman93]

that is ridiculous, read a real book, none of this e-book crap.

[paganimage]

The Kindle is in itself a Kindle killer. This device reminds me of e-book reader I had in 1990 that only had a few volumes you could buy and one of those was an outdated version of the CIA. Factbook. The iPod won't kill the Kindle, it will commit suicide...

I've always been a heavy reader. I'd rather read than watch TV or do video games, or even surf the net. I've been reading ebooks almost exclusively on my Palm Tungsten E for the past four or five years. I average a book a week, at 1/4 to 1/2 the price of printed books, and I can store the titles I've finished without putting an addition on my house. I buy my books from booksonboard.com or ereader.com in any of three available formats for the Palm: eReader, MobiPocket or Adobe. I download them, sync the PDA to get them on the SD card I've got plugged into it, and I'm ready to read. The PDA is more compact than any book. Since I've always got it with me, I always have something to read. When the iPhone can match that, I'll think about getting one.

[craigcassidy]

I own a Kindle and have owned a few Windows Mobile devices (most recently a Treo 750wx) and an iPhone. I am an avid reader.

I would love to see an iPhone application with access to the vast library provided to the Kindle wirelessly. The "Killer Apllication", the "dead simple" one would, like News Gator and the like, provide wireless access to a large library of books and seemlessly save my place. It would not be a device but a platform that would simplify my reading at work, home and on the go without regard to what electronics are at my current disposal. In the meantime everything else I buy is a temporary (& costly) means to an end.