When you get a chance check out Amazon.com's new electronic reader they're calling Kindle. According to Amazon, Kindle has been nothing short of a labor of love taking more than three years to develop, a lifetime and a half in the Internet and Technology industries. It's not a market first, Sony has had an electronic reading device on the market for a couple of years now, though you don't hear a lot of buzz about it. Our initial thought here was the device would be a nice academic tool and perhaps there was an opportunity for Sony or whoever was marketing the device to push some sort of institutional sell to schools and universities. In the case of Amazon's new Kindle device though, it seems like more of a calculated risk. There are only 90,000 of them for sale right now. They have already cut content partnership with blue chip providers i.e. NY Times, Time Magazine, etc. The only thing standing in the way of pushing out the first batch of 90,000 is price, the device costs $400 smackers, not exactly a drop in the bucket. So, is this appealing to the youth market? Probably not, as more teens and college students are more likely to own multimedia smartphones, the need for another reading type device goes by the wayside pretty quickly. Still, reading the product specs, it is definitely a cool little device, it weights less than a pound, has a large hi-res display and a fast wireless chip.
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