The Inevitable Amazon Reaction, And Of Course, Kobo

Of course you knew it was coming, right?  Like I could resist?  So what are my takes on the Amazon Kindle announcements?  A bit expected – and unexpected.

  • First I figured something was coming and it’d be more advanced.  No surprise there.
  • The moving away from Tegra chips intrigues me – and I wonder if this is some kind of experiment.  Having experienced some of the tetchyness of Android and chipsets I’m wondering if this could be a bad experiment.
  • The prices are actually a bit higher than I’d expected.

In short, except for a chipset change, nothing that truly amazed me or was unexpected.  Amazon’s got to keep evolving this.

Of course now the Kobo is broadening out and this surprised me.  This is a rather diverse release that suggests the Kobo plans are pretty bold and that they’re going to cover a lot of ground.  Time to pay more attention – this diverse set of releases really surprised me and I think we need to get a grip on their overall strategy.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.