Amazon subsidiary Quidsi, which currently operates sites like Soap.com, Diapers.com and the newly launched eco site Vine.com to name a few, will launched two more sites this week, AfterSchool.com and Bookworm.com. Both sites are targeting families with children, the former featuring over 70,000 items for “children’s activities” and the latter offering 45,000 children’s books to start. → Read More
Amazon today unveiled its new Whispercast for Kindle service, which provides businesses and other organizations like schools a way to easily deploy Kindle content to members, students and employees across not only Amazon hardware, but also Kindle apps for iOS and Android devices. Right now, it allows administrators to buy Kindle books and documents and spread them around, and in the future, Amazon… → Read More
Apple has poached an Amazon exec to take over its Siri department, according to a new report from AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. The move brings William Stasor, a former AltaVista executive who was in charge of Amazon’s independent A9 retail search subsidiary to Cupertino, and indicates we’ll see Siri get some stronger search chops as a result, especially with regards to online retail. → Read More
The Kindle DX (artist’s rendition shown here), Amazon’s 10-inch offering to the academic set, has been discontinued on the site and is only available from used dealers. Although there has been no official word concerning the DX, the product was reduced from $379 to $299 and the DX is currently out of stock on Amazon. → Read More
Amazon is in “advanced negotiations” to buy Texas Instruments’ mobile chip business, according to Israeli newspaper Calcalist, with the price expected to be in the billions of dollars range. If the deal goes ahead Amazon would take a step close to rivals Apple and Samsung by gaining the ability to design and manufacture its own mobile chips. → Read More
The Kindle Paperwhite is an amazing ereader. It’s arguably the best on the market. But it’s not flawless. Some users, including several TechCrunch writers, noticed the lighting on their Paperwhite is not evenly spaced, resulting in odd, slightly distracting gaps at the bottom of the screen (see the pic). → Read More
Amazon had another European announcement today. The Kindle Paperwhite is now available to pre-order in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Canada won’t get it for now. → Read More
Amazon continues to roll out its content offerings in Europe. Soon, Amazon Prime members will be able to borrow books from the Kindle owners’ lending library. 200,000 books are available at the time of this writing. Amazon will increase the KDP Select program fund to catch up with the increase of demand in book lending. → Read More
Internet retail giant Amazon is to spend more than $1bn to buy the Seattle corporate HQ it currently leases. Reuters is reporting the $1.16bn transaction is the biggest commercial real estate deal for a single property in the U.S. this year. → Read More
Amazon introduces Cloud Drive in Italy and Spain following September’s launch in the UK, Germany and France. Cloud Drive is Amazon’s digital locker offering to complete its media offering. As the Kindle Fire is expected to launch in Europe in the coming days, Cloud Drive will allow users to store their photos, music and documents in the cloud and stream this data to a Kindle Fire or a computer. → Read More
Back in June Amazon officially opened its appstore to international apps, adding support for software intended for the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Today it’s expanded the international reach of the platform by adding Japan to the list of supported countries — describing this as “another significant addition”. A Japanese appstore launch is planned “later this year”. → Read More
Amazon apparently underestimated the success of its newest e-reader. The company just updated its shipping estimate, pushing back the delivery date to four to six weeks after ordering. Both models, with or without 3G, are experiencing the same delay. And it’s no surprise — the device is more than an incremental improvement. → Read More
Films of books can often help drive sales of those books, and bestsellers often make for movie blockbusters, so it’s no surprise to see online bookseller Amazon today announcing that its content development arm, Amazon Studios, has optioned its first novel, the Amazon-published, Southern horror Seed, to begin making a big-screen adaptation. As with other content optioned by Amazon Studios — comic… → Read More
The e-reader arms race moves at a glacial pace. Barnes & Noble does one thing, Amazon follows. Amazon adds a feature and, slowly but surely, B&N adds the same thing. While the Kindle itself has been updated five times since 2008, it seems like it’s been around for decades and has only just now gotten much, much better.
The latest e-ink Kindle, the Paperwhite, is a beautiful device… → Read More
Rumors have been coming in that Amazon is readying a mobile payments product that could compete with Square, Intuit GoPayment and PayPal Here. A tipster and an industry source both tell us that Amazon is going after smaller chains of retailers for the product, and could be offering significantly lower credit card processing fees for merchants. Rumors are that Amazon could be offering a rate as low… → Read More
Once again, the list of places where you can buy one of Amazon’s Kindles has gotten shorter. According to a new report from Reuters, low-cost retail titan Walmart has completely dropped Amazon’s full line of Kindle e-readers from its online and brick-and-mortar stores.
Don’t hold your breath for your local Wally World to stock new models like Kindle Fire HD or the Kindle Paperwhite either — it… → Read More
App discoverability is a constant thorn in the side of developers. It’s also an obvious annoyance for consumers who have to spent time sifting through app store chaff to find the bits of software really worth downloading. Amazon looks to be considering both sides of this problem with a new feature — called Billboards — it’s just added to the Kindle Fire and Fire HD app store. → Read More
Some development in the e-book price war being played out in Europe — and an indirect victory for Amazon and any other retailer not called Apple in the process: the European Commission has announced that Apple and the four big publishers Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have offered to drop their agency pricing agreement for e-books sold in Europe — although the five… → Read More
One day after Apple’s big iPhone 5 news day, an accolade for Apple in the tablet category: J.D. Power and Associates has put the brand at the top of its annual tablet customer satisfaction survey. This is the first time that the influential pollster has tracked U.S. consumers on tablet usage — it is known for its mobile handset rankings, which Apple also topped for smartphones last week. Amazon… → Read More
Amazon, like its competitor Netflix, has been making some moves to increase the amount of exclusive, original content under its brand. Today it took one more step in that direction with the news that Amazon Studios will be launching its first self-commissioned digital comic, a version of the Blackburn Burrow Civil War story. The first copy is now free in the Kindle store.
Originally a… → Read More
The Kindle Fire HD is a big deal. Big.
It has rather excellent specs — a 1280×800 7-inch display, TI OMAP processor, dual stereo speakers, and dual-antennae Wifi (with MIMO) — and it comes at a ridiculously low price: $199. → Read More
The Kindle Fire is Amazon’s digital strategy incarnate. When it launched a year ago, the Fire seemed almost rushed. It looked like RIM’s failed Playbook tablet and it worked, at best, like the low cost tablet it was. But, in the end, it was the best device ever made to access Amazon’s own content. It delivered a seamless read experience, a compelling video collection, and enough apps to keep… → Read More
With the introduction of the $499 8.9-inch Kindle HD with LTE, Amazon now has a device with the same price tag as the new iPad. Of course, the devices are very different when it comes to capacity, connectivity and screen size. But the consumers will have no choice but to compare them.
Yet, contrarily to what many have said, Amazon is not trying to be yet another Apple wannabe. The Kindle… → Read More
If you’ve been put off by the (arguably obtrusive) Special Offers on the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon has just announced that they will allow users to pay $15 to opt-out of the ads for the life of the device.
An Amazon spokesperson wrote:
We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We’re happy to offer customers the choice. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — handicap the latest entries in the Tablet Stakes. It feels like a game of musical chairs, with three chairs and four tablet platforms. When the music stops, Apple, Amazon, and Google are sitting pretty, with Microsoft missing a business model to finance the Surface.
The iPhone 5 launch next week… → Read More
Oh did you hear? Amazon announced a bunch of new Kindles yesterday. And here’s another little tidbit - those devices, the Kindle Fire and Fire HD, are also getting an updated version of the Amazon Silk browser. The “cloud accelerated” mobile browser has received a handful of its own improvements, says Amazon, including faster page load speeds, better HTML5 support, an improved Start page, and… → Read More
During today’s Amazon Kindle Extravaganza, one of the slides that was popped up during the event got the attention of quite a few of us. It was a slide showing an in-app offer on a Kindle device.
It’s an interesting play for Amazon, as it grows itself beyond just an “e-reader”. → Read More
Along with Amazon’s big tablet announcements earlier today, it’s finally also unveiled the first markets to get the Kindle Fire tablets — both the new Kindle Fire and the HD version — outside of the U.S. The news first trickled out in a forum announcement on Amazon.co.uk, which also announced availability of the new Kindle e-reader.
This is announcement is more significant than Amazon finally… → Read More
… Literally, like on the presentation wall of what seemed like the longest Amazon Press Event in Amazon Press Event history.
For those keeping track at home, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos continued his one man attack on the print publishing industry with the announcements of the Kindle Paperwhite, new Kindle Fire, new Kindle Fire HD and an updated Kindle — Four new e-reading-focused services… → Read More
The all-new Amazon Kindles are all now available for pre-ordering from Amazon’s website. The Kindle Paperwhite retails for $119, or $179 for a version with built-in, free 3G connectivity, and those versions ship on Oct. 1. The Kindle Fire HD models come in both 7- and 8.9-inch flavors, and retail for $199 and $299 respectively for 16GB versions of those, or $249 and $369 for 32GB versions while a… → Read More
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