It's Called Kindle DX: More On Amazon's New Kindle
The tech blog Engadget was first to post not only more details collected from a number of different news sources, but also four pictures of the new Kindle, taken surreptitiously by cell phone camera, of what appears to be a dry run of Amazon's Pace University presentation. The Engadget pictures, viewable here, show a few different angles of what definitely looks to be a larger-size Kindle, including a size comparison, side by side with the current Kindle 2, with each Kindle displaying a digital copy of The New York Times.
As far as details, here's a quick rundown of what we think we know, thanks to yesterday's reports, Engadget's anonymous sources, and some new information from The Wall Street Journal:
The new Kindle is called the Amazon Kindle DX.
It has a 9.7-inch display (the current Kindle 2's display is 6 inches).
It has a built-in PDF reader.
The New York Times is one of the newspapers involved and is said to be lowering its Kindle subscription rate, currently $13.99 a month, to $9.99 a month.
Amazon is piloting a project with six institutions of higher education— including Pace, Case Western Reserve University, Reed College, Arizona State University, Princeton University and the Darden School at the University of Virginia—to preload textbooks on Kindles and give them to incoming freshman for use as early as this fall.
What are Amazon's many rivals going to do next if all this turns out to be true—or better? Everyone from manufacturers like Fujitsu and Plastic Logic to media companies like News Corp. and Hearst Corp. has been said in recent months to want a piece of large-size e-readers for periodicals.
Maybe it'll be Apple, with that hotly rumored multipurpose, all-in-one tablet device, to finally step up and challenge Amazon.
Keep checking back here as ChannelWeb brings you the full clip of Kindle announcements Wednesday.