Digital Daily » Kindle

Spare Change for Amazon Shares?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:59:38 +0000

$118.49. That’s the price at which Amazon shares closed Friday, a day after the company reported a 69 percent jump in third-quarter profit and a 28 percent gain in revenue. It was a new 52-week high and the stock’s best since December 1999, when it hit $106.68.

Which is saying something. Because as you might recall, in 1999, Nasdaq was soaring on the back of the dot-com bubble to levels never before seen.

And here we are amid the worst recession since the 1930s. Haven’t even entered that “all important holiday shopping season” yet, either.

Things are looking pretty good for Amazon (AMZN) right now. Sure, there’s renewed competition from retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT). There are potential sales tax issues and income tax liabilities and a raft of Kindle-killers headed to market. But Amazon’s stock is up 131 percent this year, brokerage firms are upgrading their ratings on the company, and analysts are saying it’s only going to go higher.

Said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney: “Near-term outlook very positive as AMZN heads into holiday season fully armed against shrinking/de-stocking offline retailers, with one of the must-have gadgets of the season (Kindle), a significantly strengthening International presence, and soon-to-be closed Zappos acquisition.”

Yeah. Things are looking pretty good right now. But we said that back in ‘99 too–when Amazon had a similar P/E.

Amazon's Blowout Q3

John Paczkowski — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:04:19 +0000

According to comScore (SCOR), U.S. Web traffic to Amazon in the most recent quarter rose 14.8 percent, far outstripping that of overall U.S. Internet traffic, which grew just 3.5 percent.

“It appears that Amazon is gaining share the old-fashioned way,” ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller noted last week, “by acquiring more and more customers…and selling more to each of them.” And judging from the nice gain in third-quarter earnings the company posted after Thursday’s closing bell, that would seem to be the case.

Net income for the period surged 69 percent thanks to a strong increase in sales. Analysts had been looking for earnings of 33 cents a share on revenue of $5.02 billion for the quarter. Amazon (AMZN) reported 45 cents a share, compared with 27 cents a share for the same period the previous year. Revenue rose 28 percent to $5.45 billion.

Once again, it seems Amazon has not broken out Kindle sales numbers in its report, though CEO Jeff Bezos did stress them in an earnings release. Said Bezos: “Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars–not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com. It’s also the most wished for and the most gifted. We are grateful for and energized by this customer response.”

Looking ahead to the key fourth quarter, Amazon is calling for revenue in the range of $8.125 billion to $9.125 billion. Analysts have been forecasting revenue of $8.13 billion. Given that the upcoming quarter includes the annual holiday shopping binge, Amazon may be looking at another blowout quarter.

Shares in the company are spiking on the news, up over nine percent to $101.90 as I write this.

Weekend Update 10.03.09–The Media-Mangle Edition

Drake Martinet — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:35:39 +0000

Books vanishing from e-readers…magazines on Hulu…DVDs from a kiosk…cats and dogs living together…mass hysteria!

If the medium was the message in yesterday’s zeitgeist, today’s “message transcends the medium” is a whole new mindset. It’s a brave new world out there, and AllthingsD didn’t fail to help make sense of it this week.

Boomtown was abuzz with the latest conversation from an Internet publishing sensation. Trip Adler, CEO of San Francisco-based Scribd, spoke to Kara about all things text and what its like to share a niche with giants. Speaking of giants, Boomtown was in Seattle this week, peering through everyone’s favorite Windows. While there, Kara caught wind of CEO Steve Ballmer’s embrace of the “new efficiency” by way of some executive belt-tightening. And in a followup to the near-viral “Louie Swisher loves Redbox” video, Kara wrote about a legal slap-fight between the DVD rental kiosk group and Fox.

While Fox was busy giving Redbox a black-eye, Digital Daily covered blows from a different kind of palm. It seems that Palm’s new mobile darling, the Pre, is a little over-abundant on store shelves. An 11 week-deep glut of the device may indicate tough times ahead for the smart-phone contender. If one plucky contender wasn’t enough, Digital Daily also covered IBM’s release of a LotusLive iNotes. This mail, calendar, and task management solution takes aim at a market currently in Google’s crosshairs. Finally, the week wouldn’t be complete with out a good Apple prognostication. John closed things out with some FCC documents that indicate a new wireless mouse and keyboard offering from the crew at 1 Infinite Loop. The logical jump is that the new input devices might be designed to complement a newly refreshed line of desktops.

John had new Macs and Peter had old tricks this week, specifically of the Kindle kind. In a settlement with the now-famous “1984 kid,” Amazon sealed up some of the holes in its policies about removing books from its Kindle devices. Now it’s most certainly against their policy to remove data…except when it isn’t. In a similar vein, more details surfaced about an upcoming e-publishing venture from Time that aims to put the content genie back in the bottle, Hulu style. The concept is to create a clearinghouse for magazines online and take back control of content and advertising dollars. Just in case we were beginning to think that there is always digital strength in numbers, Peter covered Comcast’s squashing of a rumor that it was looking to acquire a stake in NBC. Just the hint of such a move sent Comcast’s stock on a temporary tumble.

Walt was a personal technology machine this week with new additions to both the personal technology section and Mossberg’s Mailbox. And if that weren’t enough, Katie covered an important countertrend in personal tech that really turned some heads.

The personal tech feature of the week was the HTC Hero. This latest offering from the veteran Taiwan phone manufacturer features its most robust customization of the Android platform yet. Walt gave it high marks and placed it squarely among the Blackberry-Palm-Apple pantheon.

Walt checked the mailbox this week and answered some serious questions about the rise of the touchscreen laptop, the finer points of OS X and the iPhone OS, and tried to let a Vista Ultimate user down easy about the limited options for an easy upgrade to Windows 7.

Katie brought her A game to The Mossberg Solution with a succinct and poignant analysis of HP’s new growth model. The new Photosmart All-in-One with “Touch-Smart Web” bucks the current trend of photos and documents for digital display and tried to put consumers back in the printing game. The new printing experience uses a robust touchscreen and Web interface to allow printing of pics straight from the Web without a computer ever being involved. While she did have some good things to say about the printer’s apps and interface, HP’s overall strategy left her underwhelmed.

Whether you want to be the first to know when “that tablet” finally arrives or are just into the best coverage from the industry that is changing the world, there is no better homepage for all-things-tech than AllthingsD.

Weekend Update, 8.29.09–The "Skank" Issue

Beth Callaghan — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:02:44 +0000

As of this week, pretty much anyone can tell you–“Skank” blogging just doesn’t pay. Unless your $15 million privacy lawsuit against Google ends up going your way, that is. Rosemary Port, the person who used Blogger to anonymously insult former model Liskula Cohen, was unmasked last week after months of speculation, and promptly sued Google (GOOG) for turning over her information. Hilarity ensued, complete with dueling morning TV appearances. More details on MediaMemo, though Peter doesn’t usually follow that kind of stuff. Looks like Amazon’s Kindle has a couple of new competitors. Sony’s (SNE) “Reader Daily Edition” and Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) and Irex’s as-yet-unnamed Kindle-like device will join the as-yet-unnamed Kindle-like device from Barnes & Noble and Plastic Logic on the playing field. Apple (AAPL) approved at least one app this week–the one for Spotify, which is rumored to be “the best streaming music service in the world.” But as MediaMemo points out, it’s worthless without any deals with big music companies.

The Open Book Alliance formally launched the manifesto this past week with which it’s challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers. The organization now has a Web site and quite an array of allies–which include, of course, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and Amazon (AMZN). And as if Google doesn’t have enough on its plate, turns out that all along, Microsoft has been holding regular “Screw Google” meetings, the bastards. Uh, I thought that’s what people pay good money to learn in Business School. On a happier note, Howard Stern fans everywhere were happy to learn that Sirius XM (SIRI) has debuted a device that can turn an iPhone or iPod touch into a full-fledged satellite radio.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt reviewed Snow Leopard and found it to be an improvement on its predecessor, but with a lot of the upgrades under the hood invisible to most users. Not the typical object of desire we’re trained to expect out of Apple. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answers reader email about choosing a vendor to buy a computer online and setting parental controls in Firefox. In The Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret explores the trials and tribulations of BlackBerry and iPhone users switching one for the other.

More next week.

Sony E-Book Links Readers With Libraries

John Paczkowski — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:00:17 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Kindle Ate My Homework

John Paczkowski — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:17:14 +0000

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s hair-shirt apology for Kindlegate was a nice gesture, but it didn’t go over particularly well with Justin Gawronski, a Michigan high school senior who lost his homework when the retailer remotely deleted a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from his Kindle earlier this month. He’s filed a class action suit against Amazon seeking money for those who lost work due to the book deletion and an injunction barring the company from improperly deleting books from Kindles again.

Below, an excerpt from the suit and the document in full:

On or about early-June, 2009, Mr. Gawronski purchased for $0.99 an electronic copy of George Orwell’s “1984″ for use on his Kindle 2 from Amazon’s Kindle Store. He purchased the book because it was assigned to him as a summer homework assignment by a teacher at his high school.

On or about July 20, 2009, after reading online about Amazon’s practice of remotely deleting copies of “1984″ from Kindles, Mr. Gawronski powered on his Kindle 2 only to watch “1984″ vanish before his very eyes. Because “1984″ was the most recent book he had been reading on his Kindle 2 prior to July 20, 2009, the Kindle 2 powered on to the last page of “1984″ Mr. Gawronski had been reading. Within moments of powering on his Kindle 2 to this page of “1984,” the entire e-book disappeared as Amazon immediately remotely deleted it from his Kindle 2.

Mr. Gawronksi did not consent to Amazon remotely deleting “1984″ from his Kindle 2.

As part of his studies of “1984,” Mr. Gawronski had made copious notes in the book. After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984″ from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.

Amazon_Complaint

Barnes & Noble to Amazon: Mine Is Bigger Than Yours

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:00:36 +0000

Six years after shuttering its first e-book effort, Barnes & Noble has embarked on a new one. Monday afternoon, the bookseller announced what it describes as “the world’s largest eBookstore,” an online storefront that boasts 700,000 titles.

That’s substantially more than the 300,000 available for download on Amazon’s Kindle service, though half-a-million of them are public-domain books provided by Google (GOOG). They’ll be compatible with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry smartphones, and, when it finally arrives at market, the Plastic Logic eReader, a Kindle DX-size e-book reader for which the Barnes & Noble eBookstore will be the exclusive storefront.

“Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time,” said BN.com president William J. Lynch.

With a few noteworthy exceptions, of course. E-books sold by Barnes & Noble (BKS) won’t be compatible with Sony’s (SNE) Sony Reader Digital Book or Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, which they are clearly intended to undermine.

To what degree they’ll manage that is anyone’s guess. One thing is sure: We’ll almost certainly be seeing an e-book price war in the near future. And when Apple finally gets around to uncrating that tablet/e-reader device it’s been working on, all bets are off.

Below, video of the Plastic Logic Reader demo from our D7 conference in late May.

[ See post to watch video ]

Kindle Now Only $299 More Than iPhone Kindle App

John Paczkowski — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:10:09 +0000

Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles it has sold since launching the device in 2007, but it may soon be selling quite a few more of them. The company today dropped the price of the six-inch Kindle to $299, $60 off of its previous price. That’s certainly not a dramatic reduction, but it may be enough to drive consumers who’ve held off on purchasing the device to reconsider.

That said, even at this reduced price, the Amazon Kindle still costs $299 more than Kindle for Apple’s iPhone, which I’ve found to be a compelling way to read books. After six or so novels, I have no complaints about eye strain, screen size or glare. And honestly, I think I’m reading more now than I ever did before simply because I always have the book I’m currently reading in my pocket.

Anyway…

Today’s price cut makes you wonder if this presages a similar reduction for the Kindle DX, which at $489 could really use one. A bit too early, I suppose, since Amazon (AMZN) hasn’t yet announced pricing for subscriptions to the Washington Post (WPO) and New York Times (NYT). We’ll see, I guess.

Kindle DX Shipping on June 10

John Paczkowski — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:08:33 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle DX finally has a release date. It will arrive at market nine days from today. In a brief announcement issued this morning, Amazon (AMZN) said its new e-book reader, which boasts both a larger screen and price tag than its predecessor, will ship on June 10 with orders prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis.

According to Amazon, the DX will save the newspaper industry–or at least momentarily reverse its declining fortunes–and revolutionize the college textbook market as well. But with a price tag of $489–$130 more than the Kindle 2–that may be bit of a stretch.

We’ll see on June 10.

Weekend Update 5.09.09

Beth Callaghan — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:30:49 +0000

It was like a liveblogging tournament this past week–one that included a lot of the big players but ended in a three-way tie.

According to BoomTown’s reliable sources, the elusive Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) deal is making “meaningful” progress. Accordingly, BoomTown wondered whether Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer planned on visiting Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO, on his trip to the Bay Area this week or if the proximity of Stanford to Yahoo was just chance, given that Stanford was his main destination. At least one of his reasons for being in the area was to give a talk at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. BoomTown liveblogged the session and attempted to determine Ballmer’s soul-mate status. Given some of the acquisition rumors flying around this week, BoomTown decided to conduct a little experiment. Would the same sort of “Brangelina”-esque mystique apply as well to the combination of two incredibly hot tech companies? Would it create the same hysteria, and sell as many magazines (figuratively speaking)? (Non) results on BoomTown.

MediaMemo had a Kindle-ish kind of week. Amazon (AMZN) unveiled the latest iteration of the device on Wednesday in New York, and MediaMemo was there to liveblog the whole thing, including the crazy demo, during which the location’s facilities prevented Jeff Bezos from demoing pretty much anything. Also, Bezos forget to mention the fact that Amazon will be conducting a Kindle pilot program at six colleges starting this fall. Forget about getting your hands on one, though–only five students per school will be carrying their textbooks around in a Kindle instead of a backpack. MediaMemo’s advice for cash-strapped students once the devices do become available? Wait three years until the price drops. $489 is a lot to shell out on a student’s budget.

News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch had some news this week during the company’s earnings call (besides earnings)–he believes that while the state of the economy is still dire, “the worst Is over.” He also noted that although he plans to extend WSJ’s online pay model to his strongest properties soon, News Corp. will not be selling any of its content via the Kindle, as some of its competitors will. All this and more on MediaMemo.

On Thursday, Digital Daily liveblogged a press event hosted by Google (GOOG) in advance of its annual shareholder meeting. Some of the topics covered? Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, the econalypse, YouTube, netbooks, China, antitrust issues and the Apple (AAPL) Board. CEO Eric Schmidt was most forthcoming about the Federal Trade Commission’s just-opened inquiry into Google and Apple’s overlapping boards: When asked if he’d resign from the board, he replied that the thought “hasn’t crossed his mind.” Elsewhere, Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison probably ruined a few people’s mornings over at IBM (IBM) and HP (HPQ) when he told a Reuters reporter that part of his plan for Sun (JAVA) is to create an integrated hardware and software solution, effectively making their competition a little bit steeper. As such, it will be extra interesting to see how the little matter of Sun and a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act plays itself out in the courts. Details on Digital Daily.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg reviewed Quickoffice, a program that brings some full-fledged word processing capabilities to the iPhone, but has its limitations. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions about using Macs and PCs together on the same home network, backing up and transferring Outlook Express data and whether it’s possible to find a GPS program for the iPhone that will speak its directions. In the Mossberg Solution this week, Katie Boehret reviewed the Sidekick LX and found it a little out of touch with its market. More in-depth discussion, of course, on the section of the site containing Walt’s columns.

More next week. RIP Dom Deluise.

Boy, Apple’s Design Aesthetic Really Didn’t Rub Off on Kindle 1.0 at All, Did It?

John Paczkowski — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:45:37 +0000

What propitious timing. At a press conference in New York later this morning, Amazon (AMZN) is expected to announce a new large-screen Kindle designed for reading periodicals and textbooks. And yesterday, on the eve of the announcement, came word that the company had been awarded a patent on the original Kindle design. The patent, #D591,741, is entitled “Electronic media reader” and it makes just a single claim:

“The ornamental design for an electronic media reader, as shown and described.”

About as exciting as the original Kindle design it describes, but this isn’t a utility patent, so you can’t really expect much from it. That said, the reference citations it contains are interesting. Among the devices included: the iRex iLiad, the NUUTbook an early prototype of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO laptop and Apple’s MacBook Pro.

Note: Be sure to see the liveblog of the Amazon announcement in New York by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT.

Amazon's Big Book

John Paczkowski — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:58:57 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Sprint: Tourniquet, Please, Redux

John Paczkowski — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:35:32 +0000

It’s almost as if Sprint Nextel’s postpaid customers can hardly wait for their contracts to expire so they can jump to another carrier. The troubled wireless carrier lost more than one million postpaids in the first quarter of 2009 amid fierce competition from rivals AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ). “We are far from satisfied with our postpaid performance,” Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said during a conference call with analysts. “We need to do better.”

Indeed. Because while Sprint (S) offset many of those postpaid defections with big gains in the prepaid and wholesale markets–the company lost only 182,000 subscribers, net, thanks to additions from Boost Mobile and to its partnership with Amazon (AMZN) for the Amazon Kindle–postpaid subscribers are the industry’s most valuable. They usually spend more on their service, and because they’re typically bound by contract, they’re less likely to cancel service as customers who aren’t. So, the fact that Sprint’s postpaid subscribers have been fleeing the company in droves for six straight quarters is not a good sign. That said, this is the the largest quarter-to-quarter improvement in net customer additions at Sprint Nextel in recent memory (click on chart below), so things are improving, if only a bit.

Sprint posted a loss of $594 million or 21 cents per share in its first quarter, a decline of 18 percent, compared with a loss of $505 million or 18 cents per share for the same period a year ago. Revenue was $8.21 billion, down about 12 percent, and a fair bit less than the $8.28 billion analysts had been expecting.

One hopes the debut of Palm’s (PALM) new Pre handset in the months ahead will do something to change that.

Weekend Update, 4.04.09

Oliver J. Chiang — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:36:24 +0000

Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host, Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation.

And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game as Google (GOOG) and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.

But no bag of tricks was needed for one Web site to April Fool itself into crying wolf about an imminent Google (GOOG) acquisition of Twitter, when a real story around the corner was aboutGoogle turning Turbo Tax tweets into ads.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest jokesters of them all, The Onion, won one of the biggest awards in journalism, a Peabody, meaning that the best sense of humor goes to that panel of judges. And to Stephen Colbert, who was willing to entertain (for a while) Twitter spokesmodel Biz Stone’s biz-model-less thoughts in an interview on “The Colbert Report.” Also on BoomTown this week: Facebook’s former CFO Gideon Yu is out, as was a leaked memo from Mark Zuckerberg about Yu’s departure and the company’s situation.

A sense of humor is certainly an invaluable feather to have in your cap these days. Digital Daily wrote about the most recent doom-and-gloom predictions and events to happen in this econalypse, like analysts’ predictions of YouTube losing $470 million in 2009, the barren IPO-less wasteland VCs are bemoaning and a major global slump in semiconductor sales. Other headlines weren’t quite so dreary: Google’s foray into VC land, the folks at BlackBerry HQ celebrating surprisingly good fourth-quarter results and the world’s worst-kept secret, the anticipated merger between IBM (IBM) and Sun (JAVA).

There was a similar mix of dark clouds and silver linings over at MediaMemo. The National Collegiate Athletics Association forced Twitter and partners AT&T (T) and Federated Media to take down one of its first ad campaigns, “March Tweetness,” crying copyright foul. Also running afoul with big companies in legal waters, free music Web site Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy. And video site Veoh laid off a significant amount of staff and kicked out its old CEO, replacing him with founder Dmitry Shapiro and refocusing the company on its “Video Compass” browser plug-in.

Online video is generally a turbulent space these, but the waiting is the hardest part for Hulu when it comes to the rumored Disney deal in which Disney (DIS) seems to be playing the field. Other gems of the week were URL-shrinking Web service bit.ly’s raising of $2 million and media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Kindle envy.

In a new Mossblog, Walt Mossberg gives us his first impressions of the BlackBerry App World store in which Research in Motion (RIMM) takes a bold step into what was formerly the sole domain of Apple (AAPL). In Personal Technology, Walt reviews a network hard drive from Western Digital (WDC) that makes the technology gloriously simple for everyone. And in Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret takes a look at several laptop trays, designed to protect the–ahem–family jewels and family members in general from laptops’ scorching undersides.

Finally, our exciting Woz-watch, after many weeks, has come to a sad end: Steve Wozniak was voted off “Dancing with the Stars” this week after one misstep too many. Down, but not out, the Apple co-founder swore that the “geeks shall inherit the earth”… just not the dance floor, any time soon. Please.

More next week.

Good Thing the iPhone Doesn't Have a Brain Wave Analyzer…

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:05:58 +0000

With its speech synthesizers, brain current-operated controls and solar power source, the device described in Monec Holdings’ patent–“electronic device, preferably an electronic book,”–would seem to have little in common with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. Certainly, the iPhone doesn’t yet support brain wave sensors, nor can it display Braille. Still, it is a “light-weight” electronic device with a “touch-screen” and “a power source.” It does have “a flat, frame-like housing.” And it is capable of displaying e-books. Which in Monec’s opinion make it similar enough to an “electronic device, preferably an electronic book” to file suit over. And that’s exactly what the company has done. In a lawsuit (PDF) filed against Apple Monday, Monec accuses the iPhone maker of infringing upon its astonishingly broad patent, claiming Apple’s distribution of e-book applications like Stanza and Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle through its App Store has done it harm. It’s demanding damages, including lost profits and reasonable royalties, as well as attorneys’ fees. Hard to see Monec collecting them though given the breadth and general sci-fi silliness of the patent at issue.