The Digital Reader

There is a post on the NY Times Bits blog that speculates about what Amazon is going to do with the Kindle. Unfortunately, it only has the 1 piece of new info: in the past Amazon has listed a couple dozen job positions at Lab126 (they designed the Kindle hardware). The rest of the post is old info or rumor.

The basic idea behind that post is that Amazon is gearing up for war with Apple. Um, no. Amazon is a service company and Apple is a hardware company. Apple can’t beat Amazon at their own game, and while Amazon might like to sell hardware, they’re almost as happy just selling the the books.

Besides, the Pad doesn’t compete with the Kindle and can’t compete with the Kindle for 2 obvious reasons: price and weight. If Amazon is gearing up to beat anyone, it’s the other e-readers on the market, not the iPad.