*UPDATE: Includes an additional quote from an Amazon spokesperson citing the rumors of college outreach as "speculation."
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Amazon is eying the huge college textbook market as it develops next generation models of its Kindle eBook reader, an analyst who spoke the company has concluded.
"There are already several new, improved versions of the Kindle in the works," McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Tim Bueneman said in an email to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Amazon sees a "big opportunity" in the student market, he says.
Bueneman gave no particular details on what might make the Kindle a better sell on campus -- presumably critical mass of relevant content will be key, and there is talk of a better interface. But Bueneman says Amazon has no plans for an mp3 player component which, we must say, would have seemed like a very flawed pander to a wired crowd.
Amazon representative Kinley Campbell confirms there will be updates, but little else.
“We're committed to Kindle -- there will be a second version, a fifth version, etc. but we haven't announced a timeline for a second generation device,” Campbell told Wired.com in an email. In another example of what it won't be, she said they had no plans to incorporate video into the device.
Heather Huntoon, another spokesperson from Amazon, would not confirm any truth to the mention of outreach targeting college students.
“We have not made any announcements on future devices. Anything you've read about our future plans should be considered rumor and speculation," she said in an email.
Tackling the college crowd certainly makes sense, at least in terms of numbers. Sales of e-textbooks increased 28 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers.
And as our sister site, Ars Technica, notes, there is also a growing trend of downloading texts via bit torrent and offering open source versions online.
Rumors of next generation Kindles have popped up in recent months, as well as a few unsubstantiated sales estimates and projections.
Bueneman downplayed the numbers being thrown around by both Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney and Tech Crunch, saying Amazon managers told him that “the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates 'did not run them by company.’”
Gossip and rumors aside, the Kindle is doing one thing right, and creating quite the pre-boom buzz.
Photo: Flickr/ericajoy
