...on Amazon.com. But that is saying A LOT. Amazon is a mega force in the online retailing industry, but that is neither here nor there...
If you haven’t heard of a Kindle by now, it’s a portable handheld “thing” (that kind of looks like iPad’s reject brother) which allows you to read books and other printable media on it. The Kindle from Amazon was released for public consumption in 2007, and in a relatively short span of over three years, has been updated three times. The latest Kindle, the creatively titled Kindle 3 was released on July 28, 2010.
Updated hardware, screen size, wi-fi, and other personalized touches, such as more aesthetically pleasing buttons/keys, and such make it an easier to function, and, a more importantly CHEAPER product.
It got me thinking about the future of print. As we all know, print is on its way out…but I’m curious as to how fast? Products like this, and the newly crazed iPad (and it’s newly released digital newspaper) is making it harder and harder for print to say relevant.
Heck, even the New York Time’s publisher and chairman, Arthur Sulzberger said print is destined to run out. According to the article, he was quoted saying:
"We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD," Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a London media summit Wednesday.
Obviously it’s not surprising, but when a chairman and publisher of one of the most successful newspapers in the world says that, and comes to term with all the threats that has piled up against him, the world takes a step back (at least I would hope so) and starts to question their role in this.
I’m curious to see what you guys think. How often do you find yourself reading a newspaper, magazine, novel or any other sort of printed material? When do you think print will really start to become completely irrelevant in our lives? 20 years? 40? 60? Only time will tell, but what are your predictions?
Thanks for reading!
iPad's new daily newspaper
NY Times article
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