Executive Briefing
How Amazon blew it with the Kindle
The Kindle ‘won’ but has no soul — and Amazon seems to have stopped trying.
By Dan Frommer on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 at 3:00 pm
When Amazon announced its latest top-of-line Kindle last week, and the headline feature was that the $250 Kindle Oasis display was now capable of a warm glow for evening readers, I rolled my eyes hard enough that a tweet popped out.
“Amazon’s approach to the Kindle product remains befuddling. Talk about entering a market, quickly achieving dominance, and then coasting with feet up for more than a decade — random, bizarre updates and bracingly mediocre software.”
It was my most active tweet in a while, with hundreds of likes, many nods of agreement, and a reply from Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe: “It’s so sad. ☹️”
So this calls for a bit more attention. Why so sad? Why even care?
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Hi, I’m Dan Frommer and this is The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.
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