For a long time I’ve been playing with the idea of a kindle. I really like them but that initial outlay added to the fact that despite zero production costs eBooks are the same price as physical books has stayed my hand (see eBook Prices for details). Yesterday Amazon threw another spanner in the works with their release of the Kindle Fire and Kindle touch. Now the kindle Fire is a so called “iPad killer” in that it is designed to go head to head with the lord of tablet computers the iPad. The kindle touch is a smaller lighter cheaper faster version of the kindle that drops all controls in favour of touch technology. I was pretty much instantly sold on the kindle touch.
That’s when it all went wrong. When will these two fab products be released in the UK? The answer….Not now and maybe not ever. Don’t worry I thought I’m going to the states in November I’ll buy one and bring it home! Oh no I wont, Touches and Fires are for US residents only, they can not be registered with Amazon.co.uk and buying sufficient eBooks from Amazon.com would lead to the tax man paying me a painful visit.
Instead what do we get. We get the new entry level “Kindle” that has none of the ergonomic controls of the current kindle (now called “Kindle keyboard”) or the current kindle at the new low low price of ….£10 less than it was yesterday.
American news agency’s are asking “will the Fire at half the price of the ipad2 be able to knock it off its perch.” I can answer for them. No. As they have completely ignored the potential of other markets.
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