Amazon.com Said to Introduce Thinner Kindle in August (Update2)

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, plans to introduce the next version of its Kindle electronic-book reader in August, according to two people familiar with its plans.

The device will be thinner and have a more responsive screen with a sharper picture, the people said, who didn’t want to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The new Kindle won’t include a touch screen or color, they said.

Amazon.com, which introduced the Kindle in 2007, faces increased competition from Apple Inc.’s iPad -- a tablet device that lets users browse the Web, watch video and read digital books. The company also faces a renewed challenge from Sony Corp., which introduced a touch-screen e-reader last year. Sony also added a service that lets users download books wirelessly, matching a feature of the Kindle.

Craig Berman, a spokesman for Seattle-based Amazon.com, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

Amazon.com fell $1.24 to $125.46 today in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 6.7 percent this year.

Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said this week that the company was concentrating on wooing committed book readers and that a color display screen is “some ways out.”

Not Ready

“I’ve seen some stuff in the laboratory, but it’s not quite ready for prime-time production,” Bezos said May 25 at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

The Kindle uses a black-and-white screen that mimics the appearance of paper. The new version will have sharper contrast that makes e-books look more like real books, the people familiar with the product said. The delay during page turns also will be shortened. The iPad, meanwhile, uses a full-color LCD screen.

About 6 million e-readers will be sold this year, up from 3 million last year, according to Forrester Research Inc. The Kindle has about 60 percent of the U.S. market, followed by Sony with 35 percent, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research firm estimates.

Earlier this year, Amazon.com bought a company called Touchco, which specializes in touch-screen technology, according to the people.

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter Burrows in San Francisco at pburrows@bloomberg.net; Joseph Galante in San Francisco at jgalante3@bloomberg.net

MacBook Air update this week?

There might be a new MacBook Air released this week, according to a well-placed source familiar with Apple inventory levels and product refreshes.

The same person who correctly predicted the recent MacBook Pro updates a week before they arrived has been in touch with Australian Macworld after finding a new Apple product number on the Apple database.

The source says the number, MC516LL/A K87 BETTER BTR-USA, most likely points to a Mac product due to the 'BETTER' segment of the product code.

There is some potential it could refer to a 27in display, which has been rumoured to be coming to match the 27in iMacs. However, it looks like there are several thousand on their way to Australia this week, which suggests a major new product.

We’ve also heard whisperings that the current MacBook Air is difficult to come by, despite showing an estimated shipping time of 24 hours on the Apple Store.

The new product, whatever it is, will most likely be announced this Tuesday, 11 May (US time, so Wednesday morning for us in Australia).

HP Hurricane webOS tablet may be released in 3rd quarter

New HP tablet to run webOS
image source: Palm

We first speculated that since HP bought out Palm, they would come out wth a webOS tablet. According to many industry insiders, this appears to be more of a reality now. An insider at HP tells us that a webOS tablet under the code name HP Hurricane could be released the third quarter of this year.

Not too long ago--actually, only three weeks back--HP was still bragging about its HP Slate, a Windows 7 based tablet that was supposed to become the new iPad killer. However, early reviews suggested that the HP slate should just kill itself and that's exactly what appears to have happened.

"It is a really interesting device, but runs as slow as a turtle," says Los Angeles industry analyst Paul Mueller. "I think they could have had something with a faster processor, but that would have led to less battery life than the Slate already had." Like us, Mr. Mueller looks forward to the HP Hurricane. "If rumors of this tablet are true, this can be a killer device--webOS is an outstanding operating system for a tablet."