Saturday, May 30, 2009

Colorless Kindle Continues

Folks waiting for the Kindle to take on a few shades besides gray before they buy are going to be left waiting a little longer if this week's speech by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is any indication.

Speaking at the annual Amazon shareholders meeting, Bezos said that a color Kindle was still many years away, despite the arrival of Fujitsu's full-color FLEPia looming on the horizon.

"I know it's multiple years. I don't know how many years but it's years," he said. "I've seen the color displays in the laboratory and I can assure you they're not ready for prime time."

Image credits:

Rainbow - Oren neu dag - cc3.0
Eyes - Brightster

3 comments:

  1. Stephen, this image is priceless!

    ReplyDelete
  2. From what I've been reading, the eInk color displays still have price and latency issues that render them less than cost-effective for a mass-market commercial product, and the EFD displays that have recently been developed require power to each pixel to maintain it in a non-neutral state, so it would be actively draining power whenever it's on, not just when the page is turned -- which would kill screensavers, since they'd just drain your battery.

    ReplyDelete
  3. To put what "anonymous" said in laymans terms, a colour Kindle would be priced out of the market for most people. The majority of readers are saying $259 is quite high for a dedicated e-ink reader and you are looking at $800 plus for a color one with technology that will drain batteries in hours rather than weeks. The Fujitsu Flepia eReader is in colour and costs more than $1,000 US. http://e-readerfeeder.com

    ReplyDelete