The teardown specialists at the market research firm iSuppli are back in the news today. They’ve just released their estimate for the K4, and it looks like Amazon are shaving margins. Amazon’s basic Kindle, the K4, costs around $79 for parts and $5 for assembly. With a retail in the US of $109, Amazon are [...]
Entries from November 9th, 2011
Amazon Now going After Siri – They Just Bought a Speech-Recognition Startup
November 9th, 2011 · No Comments · hardware rumors
Amazon did their best to hid it, but word is leaking out today that Amazon appear to have purchased Yap, a 5 year old speech-recognition startup. There’s no real proof, but The Atlantic Monthly turned up some paperwork (PDF) that Yap filed with the state of Delaware. This North Carolina based startup reported that they [...]
Tags:
Will the Rakuten Buyout Really Help Kobo Succeed?
November 9th, 2011 · 8 Comments · opinion
Late last night Kobo announced that they were being sold to Rakuten, one of the world’s larger web retail conglomerates. Like many I was thrilled for Kobo because this was a great opportunity for them to call on the resources of a much bigger and more capable company – one that has toeholds in any [...]
Tags:
Why Did it Take Stephenie Meyer so Long to Join the Kindle Millions Club?
November 9th, 2011 · 9 Comments · opinion
Amazon announced today that they were adding another 3 authors to the Kindle Millions Club. David Baldacci, Amanda Hocking and Stephenie Meyer have all sold a million or more copies of Kindle ebooks. They’ll be joining Amazon’s growing group of successful ebook authors, including Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne [...]
Tags:
Kobo Books Sold for $315 Million
November 8th, 2011 · 10 Comments · ebookstore news
Kobo just announced in the past hour that they’ve been sold to Rakuten, a Japanese web retail giant, for $315 million. Details are still scarce, but the press release is already out and it covers the basics. Rakuten will be buying out everyone, including Indigo Books, who will be getting somewhere around $160 million for [...]
Tags:
B&N and Amazon Are At It Again
November 8th, 2011 · 20 Comments · hardware news
The 2 major US e-reader makers are once again squabbling like school children. This is the second round of squabbling, and it looks to be as entertaining as the earlier fight back in May of this year. Do you remember what happened back then? Barnes & Noble launched the Nook Touch, and one of their [...]
Tags:
Broward County Library Launches New Ebook Airport Program
November 8th, 2011 · No Comments · digital library
I’ve posted in the past about an e-reader petting zoo in an airport, and I’ve even posted the occasional image showing how you could buy an e-reader from a vending machine. But late last week i came across something new. It’s a clever little program being run in Florida by Broward County Library, and it’s [...]
Tags:
Ebook Sales now 21% of Hachette Revenue
November 8th, 2011 · 4 Comments · ebook sales
The French media conglomerate Lagardere released some details from their quarterly report today, and the figures for the publishing division might shock you. When compared to 2010 , sales were down 5% last quarter at Lagardere Publishing (down to 601 million euros), with the US and UK markets seeing an even steeper drop (8% and [...]
Tags:
Kindle Cloud Reader Now Works on Firefox
November 8th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Amazon, kindle app
Amazon just announced that their new HTML5 based reading app, Kindle Cloud Reader, now supports Mozilla Firefox web browser. Amazon launched this app a little over 3 months ago, and at the time it only worked on the iPad. It was pretty clear back then that Amazon developed this app in response to Apple (and [...]
Tags:
We Need A Better Way to Manage Content
November 8th, 2011 · 8 Comments · opinion
When the Kindle first arrived there was no way to create groups. Every book, newspaper or magazine just got plopped onto the home screen. As a result, everyone’s home screen quickly turned into many home screens and you had to flip through page after page to find what you’re looking for. Fast forward to today [...]
Tags:
RSS
Email
Facebook
Twitter
