Someone on Linkedin asked a question about whether Kindle was merely a hyped up product which didn’t proliferate among its target market and I decided to answer. Here’s a slightly modified version of my answer.
My thoughts on Kindle : Here’s the thing: Somehow, Jeff Bezos’ hubris led him to spend millions of R&D resources in the hope that he could create the next…iPod? Wii for books? I don’t think he knew the answer yet and neither do I. Did he just have bad new (ouch!) product development? What was his marketing team thinking? Did they forget about DRM and how today’s generation doesn’t like it as much? Or did they just begin their product planning processes 10 years ago and saw it come to fruition in October 07?
What I know however is that today’s wired (or is it wireless) world prefers the convenience of a single device containing all the technologies that users require in terms of social networking, business tools (outlook, excel et al) and entertainment. So, give me Facebook/Windows mobile, my pictures, videos, cool im/text messaging and my bluetooth ear piece with my iPhone and I’m golden. But, as novel as the ebook option sounds, most seasoned readers will admit that there’s nothing like browsing through the pages of a book. So, I wonder who was the target market for this device? Was it business travelers or was it a sub-segment of the million of Amazon shoppers i.e. those who purchased books maybe? Did they think that they would achieve a certain penetration target and then let those early adopters drive this into the mainstream? I can just see book club members sitting around a room discussing a NYT bestseller, Kindle in hand. I my opinion, the folks using this right now are the frequent travelers who don’t want to lug around books at an airport and like the convenience of something like this. Tsk. tsk.
And not all the publishers in the world went along with Kindle so yes, there are limited titles. Though in all fairness, I think more than 90,000 titles should be more than adequate to cover most subjects. I’d like to think that while the product specs in terms of readability were reasonable and the black and white screen avoided the glare effect of a PC screen. Maybe that’s a problem… No color!
So, was Amazon was trying to follow to build some sort of customer retention model and guarantee a lower-margin, higher-volume stream of revenue? Or was it trying to ape the iTunes model. Problem is not only does Apple have a cool brand – it’s also got cool products. Amazon, while huge in scale is still a reseller – A good one though. Probably, one of the best. We all know how Mr. Bezos began his business selling books back in 1994 and pioneered the online selling business setting the standard for such enterprises. We all know how he diversified and began selling DVDs, CDs, electronics, food etc. And, hopefully, all of us also know that he hit a profit in 2003 only. So, the dot com market cap exaggerations did help keep Amazon afloat along with some good old fashioned perseverance.
I think Jeff Bezos should be grateful that his pet project didn’t turn into a disaster and get him fired like Steve Job’s pet project did when he was usurped by Scully and the Apple board back in the day (Jobs’ bounce back, of course, is the stuff of legends). I’m not putting the Mr. Bezos down – he’s the man. I’m just stating that some disasters can be avoided if one does good due diligence. So, in conclusion, despite that hype about Kindle in the blog sphere (nice guerrilla marketing by Amazon), I agree that inadequate vision, poor product design and lack of adequate marketing strategy led to the creation of a mediocre unsuccessful product.
