As expected, Amazon today drew the curtain back from their newly designed Kindle 2 device. Available February 24, 2009 for $359 (all existing orders will automatically upgrade to a Kindle 2) the specs are indeed an upgrade over the original Kindle. Also, the leaked images appear to have been exactly on the money. Some of the newest features are “geeky cool” — text to voice, 25% longer battery life, just over 1/3 of an inch thin, 10.2 ounces, 20% faster page turns, 3G wireless. But the one feature that I hadn’t heard about – which I think we might be most excited about is Whispersync.
As seen on this screen shot from Engadget’s live coverage of the Amazon Kindle 2 press conference, one of the new features of Kindle 2 is called Whispersync.
On the surface this would seem to only be a method to synchronize data (last page read, books bought, etc) between more than one Kindle. And perhaps this may be all that it is.
But I doubt it. I think Whispersync will have a bigger role.
See in the slide above where the words “other mobile devices” appear. BINGO.
What I would love to see is not only support for Kindle books on iPhone and BlackBerry and Android and Windows Mobile — but how about if Kindle books were supported on dumb terminals.
Imagine if the major airlines had a Kindle compatible device embedded into your seatback. Or if the waiting room in your doctor’s office had a free device so that when you entered in your Kindle ID – suddenly would sync up all your books, magazines, etc.
With Whispersync it certainly seems like this could be on the drawing board. Properly executed it could mean that in the future you don’t have to ever buy a newspaper – because with your Amazon Whispersync code and a compatible device (likely a public terminal) you could be reading anywhere, anytime.
And if my hunch is correct, couldn’t they have terminals with GPS that dynamically changed the advertisements based upon your location?
As of right now it’s all an interesting theory about Whispersync. All that Amazon has announced is that Whispersync will keep one or more Kindles in sync with each other. Reading between the lines I think it’s safe to assume that not a lot of households will be purchasing MULTIPLE $359 eBook readers.
So where does Whispersync truly fit in? Could it become a way that Amazon significantly broadens its reach by allowing you to connect to your content from any place with a dumb terminal that uses Whispersync? Could newspapers use this as a way to finally get rid of home delivery and the printed page? It won’t happen over night, but played correctly Whispersync could be the first step toward the elimination of paper publishing.
