Newspaper-friendly Kindle, Sony Reader coming, say reports

As early as this week, The New York Times is reporting, Amazon could introduce a larger version of its Kindle e-book reader, better-suited than the current Kindle 2 to displaying newspaper and magazine pages. The Times is among the newspapers now sold by subscription ($13.99 a month) on the Kindle 2.

[Update: Amazon has now called a news conference for Wednesday morning. While they won't confirm the topic, it's widely expected to be related to the Kindle. I'll attend and report back. —PR]

Meantime, the Wall Street Journal, also sold by subscription for the Kindle ($9.99 a month), is also reporting that other newspapers, including the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, which discontinued daily delivery earlier this year, are readying an experiment with a letter-paper-sized reading tablet that uses e-ink, the display technology used by the Kindle and competing Sony Reader. In the tests, Detroit readers might lease the devices, which would provide access (presumably wireless, though the report does not confirm this) to the paper; lease fees would apply against the cost of the device.

The Journal story also reports that Sony is readying a wireless e-reader device. The lack of wireless access, and newspaper and magazine subscriptions, are among the key distinctions of the Sony devices compared to the Kindle.

The takeaway: These developments arguably have more to do with the malaise in the newspaper industry—witness the management/union drama playing out today at the Boston Globe—than they do any particular demand for consumers to get their news on subscription platforms like these e-readers.

In reviewing the Kindle, we did call out its newspaper subscriptions—which, like all Kindle content, download wirelessly—as among the device’s key conveniences. They allow you to read the paper on a screen that, at six inches measured diagonally, is larger than that on any cell phone.

But many mobile newshounds are now reading news, and for free, from the Times and other sources on tiny phone screens. It’s at best unclear that they’ll be willing to acquire another device, even if the newspaper subsidizes its cost, in order to begin viewing content on a bigger screen. Or that they’ll take to paying for news, albeit viewed on a bigger screen, that they now get for free, on both their phones and their computers.

As for timing of any Kindle announcement, this would be an odd week to unveil a new product that might suppress sales of the existing Kindle 2. With Mother’s Day coming, and many Kindle owners (and fiction readers, period) being female, Amazon is clearly hoping to sell a lot of Kindles in the next few days, as “the ideal gift” for mom—in the words of Amazon’s current, pink-themed home page. —Paul Reynolds