At the Amazon shareholders’ meeting today, Bezos beat around the bush Kindle-wise, preferring not to state how many Kindles had been sold and how much money had come from and gone into the project. “I beg your indulgence on the question” was his way of stating “not palatable for shareholders at this time.” However, he was more forthcoming on the possibility of a color Kindle. Of course they’re working on one, why on earth wouldn’t they be?
But despite recent advances and even a color eBook on the market, Bezos says that color e-ink displays are “not ready for prime time,” and he doesn’t expect a color Amazon device for years.
That’s too bad, because with Amazon’s connections with universities, the Kindle could be a real replacement for those wallet-killing full-color textbooks. English majors had it easy, but studying Neuroscience at UCLA as I did meant buying probably a thousand dollars worth of books and miscellany. I would have loved to have a color Kindle DX, and would have gladly paid good American dollars (they were good back then) for versions of pretty much any of my books.
Not to mention that a color device really opens up the platform to killing glossy magazines and other colorful what-have-yous. Most of what I read is black and white, but Amazon is going to need to tap the Glamour and Enquirer market if they want to get one of these things in every home.