Amazon has announced that the color Kindle … isn’t coming anytime soon. At an annual shareholder meeting, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that while the company has plans to create one eventually, the color Kindle is “still a long way out.” With the iPad increasing in popularity — slaughtering netbooks along the way — and color eReaders like the Android-powered Pandigital Novel seeing release, Amazon’s turtle pace might damage its chances of winning the eBook war.
A colorful version of the Kindle has been talked about for some time. After Amazon purchased Touchco earlier this year and featured color in its desktop apps, it seemed eminent that it would push out a color touchscreen eReader.
Should Amazon be worried about competing with the iPad? Absolutely. However, it doesn’t appear as though they are. Bezos asserted that the Kindle is for diehard readers and that enticing that audience is where the Kindle will soar.
“The Kindle will compete with these LCD devices like the iPad by being a very focused product. Serious readers are going to want a purpose-built device, because it’s an important activity for them,” Bezos said. He also said that he’s seen “several [color touchscreens] in the laboratory, but they are not quite ready for production.” Nothing yet has matched the readability of eInk tech.
Even though Amazon might be falling behind in terms of tech evolution, the Kindle has a healthy 62 percent share of the eReader market, according to a ChangeWave survey, and is aggressively extending its influence across mobile devices. Amazon does not reveal sales figures for the Kindle, so it’s undetermined how well it’s doing against Apple’s iPad.