Michael at TechCrunch posits that the “big Kindle” we heard about is actually aimed at the college textbook market. It definitely makes sense. He writes:
Earlier this week Crunchgear broke the news on two new upcoming Kindle models: a smaller form factor Kindle to be released this year ahead of the holidays, and a large screen (probably 8.5×11) to come sometime next year.
A couple of commenters in that post have pointed out that the large screen Kindle is perfect to target the college/university textbook market, a $5.5 billion market annually in the U.S. alone.
Most students still buy print versions of textbooks, and carrying them around is as big a pain as it has been for past generations of students. Most publishers now offer electronic versions of their textbooks – McGraw-Hill Education, for example, publishes 95% of their books electronically as well as in print. But there is no compelling device to read them on. The current kindle is too small, and laptops run out of power too quickly.
A new large screen kindle would solve those problems. The battery life is much longer than most electronic devices, and carrying a large Kindle is still a lot better than carrying ten heavy textbooks. Our guess is that Amazon will make a major push into the educational markets next year – it’s the only obvious reason to create a large screen Kindle.
It’s going to be difficult to read textbooks on a Kindle, considering they are black and white. A lot of photos and illustrations require color to be useful.
It’s time to come up with a color Kindle – and please, don’t make the box butt-ugly Amazon!
It seems to me that most if not all the books I read for pleasure are black text on white. Even text books are ok without color. Magazines, well that’s another story.
Dear Sir / Madam
USB Flash Drives (jump drives, thumb drives) with custom logo printing. Need your information pre-loaded onto the USB drive? No problem. We do that too. We manufacturer our own USB drives, eliminating costs. We pass these cost savings directly to you – bringing you the best pricing available. Please note that the price of memory does fluctuate weekly.
You select the model style, color, memory capacity, Then tell us your printed logo. We handle all parts of your project from start to finish.
We only supply the latest High-Speed USB 2.0 drives. USB 2.0 drives are 40 times faster than the older USB 1.1 drives (480 Mbit/sec vs. 12 Mbit/sec). Because the USB 2.0 standard is backward compatible.
If you are interested in our products or price list, please contact us at any time.
We thank you very much for your attention and look forward to your reply soon.
Thank you
Ken