Come on, that’s like saying only x% of the U.S. population listen to music outside the home or car, why would anyone market a portable music player. If anything ipod’s success shows that an innovative product can be hugely successful even with a limited market size.

Posted by Gifts | 3:58 pm on January 16, 2008.

He’s probably right that it will fail, but the glaring hole in his logic is that Amazon built their business off of selling books. It’ll fail for other marketing reasons, not because people don’t like to read, but because people like to read and own actual books and because reading a screen just doesn’t cut it.

Posted by Kevin | 6:03 am on January 17, 2008.

I don’t think it will fail at all. Here’s why:

1. With Kindle I was able to quickly buy about 15 books which I was curious about, but wasn’t likely to purchase if I had to make physical space for them. By the way, these are all non-fiction books. Also, the roughly 1/2 price level vs. physical books was enough savings for me to buy books I would have otherwise skipped.

2. I wouldn’t feel safe with this model if it were not for the fact that my ownership of these books can’t “vape” on me if the device crashes, etc. This is a GREAT concept — having the books tied to my Amazon account.

3. The wireless downloading is a great enabler, without which I think this idea would not work nearly as well.

4. The Kindle device can be easily improved in next iterations (e.g., the full-length, right-side page turning button is a massive design flaw in my experience — I am constantly “accidentally” turning the page by simply touching the device. But keep in mind that since my books are still in or linked to my Amazon account, when they improve the device all those design improvements become part of my already purchased books.

So, to me, for people who do buy lots of books — and I am one of those people — this is a great model. The Kindle device needs improvements, but the business model and end-user facing benfits are excellent.

This model will survive and trive.

Posted by Anonymous | 6:48 pm on January 20, 2008.