Rupert Bashes The Kindle

Rupert Murdoch has not been a fan of e-book readers since day one. He has talked about how premium content will make its way back to the Internet and has talked about the frustrations of publishers with companies such as Amazon. In his latest attempt to explain his disdain for Kindle (and other e-book readers), Murdoch put his finger on one of Kindle’s biggest weaknesses:

The Kindle is a fantastic invention for books, but it’s not much of an experience for newspapers.

There are a lot of people who enjoy the simple but convenient reading experience that you get on the current generation of Amazon Kindle. The software is not anything fancy and the device does not support magazines and newspapers in color. Amazon has still sold a decent amount of subscriptions to magazines and blogs through Kindle store, but publishers have always been unhappy with their cut. Besides, the platform doesn’t support dynamic content at this point, which is where the publishing industry is heading.

Of course, Murdoch’s main problem with Amazon is over money. Murdoch seems to not like Amazon Kindle’s domination one bit, hoping for a better bargaining position in a more competitive market:

We want to get our fair share of revenue

Amazon has some big issues to address if it wants to take the Kindle platform to the next level. The current contracts with publishers is heavily in favor of Amazon, making publishers not too eager to share their content on Kindle. The reading experience on Kindle needs to be improved with better software (and hardware). Kindle DX was supposed to address some of those issues, but it seemed it was rushed to the market to take advantage of the back-to-school season. Kindle 3.0 is expected to have better navigation capabilities, and it might be the first color-screen Kindle. But can Amazon keep the price affordable? That’s something we will have to wait and see.