Touchscreen Kindle? Count On It!

Touchscreen devices are on top nowadays. Apple iPhone breathed new life to this category of handheld devices, but other companies have picked the ball up and are running with it. Apple itself is not planning to move away from touchscreen devices anytime soon. In fact, the company has been looking for ways to improve its touch-sensitive devices. Now you can consider Amazon among those companies interested in adding touchscreen technology to their products. Amazon has recently acquired Touchco to build its own super Kindle. Considering the pressure Amazon is facing to compete with iPad who can blame the company.

Amazon’s move is certainly interesting as Touchco’s touch-technology is very flexible and can detect an unlimited number of touch-points. So the accuracy will be much better on a device that uses the technology. It will be fairly cheaper as well (video courtesy of NY Times):

Color e-paper is around the corner no matter what Jeff Bezos want us to believe. In fact, just a year ago there were rumors that Amazon was testing color-screen Kindles before deciding to postpone the project due to not having a way to manage costs for such device. Fast forward 12 months, and there is no reason we can’t have a color-screen, touch-screen Kindle soon.

I am a big fan of Kindle (and Nook too for that matter), and I sure do hope that these devices stay as e-book readers. But it’s very likely that the future iterations of these devices will look something like the iPad. At the end of the day, Kindle is just a tool. Amazon needs to also focus on its relations with publishers to pass more value and savings to its customers.

Your take: are you excited about the potential touch-screen, color Kindle?