For many of us the Kindle is as, if not more, a part of our lives than the iPod is. I'm one of those folks and my Kindle goes with me nearly everyplace I go. Many didn't really get the first generation iPod, it required an Apple PC to work properly and it was kind of buggy but, it was still vastly better in terms of total experience (if you had a Mac) than anything else in the market. But the 2nd generation took off; will the same thing happen to the Kindle 2?

Being a Kindle fan I'd like to say that history will repeat itself but there are vast differences between the Kindle and the iPod, not the least of which is that an iPod Touch and iPhone are can be used as eBook readers, which has me conclude that while the Kindle 2 will easily outsell the Kindle 1 it will fall well short of iPod's massive sales numbers.

Comparing Limitations

Apple got a huge amount of excitement built up around the first generation iPod but the problem was it wouldn't work with PCs on about 97% of the desktops and the return rates were near legendary in the January following the launch. This indicated demand for the device was there it just wasn't strong enough to force enough people to change over to Apple's PC platform.

For the Kindle the limitations are simply based on supply and channel. There were some minor issues with the first generation Kindle that made it more difficult to use than the second is but it worked just fine. The product is channel bound at the moment, that is to say you can only find it at Amazon and that limits both its visibility and buying opportunities.

Improvements in the product include better buttons, a thinner profile, better battery life, and a better screen. The device really needed some kind of a built in light for night reading but that has yet to be properly addressed. Like the original iPod the Kindle provides the sustaining advantage of being able to get to electronic books faster and easier than any competing device, however, unlike the iPod it is starting to face convergence competition early ironically from third parties building free readers like the Stanza http://www.lexcycle.com for the Apple iPod/iPhone platform.

Wrapping Up:

Amazon has a window of opportunity to really own this space and the Kindle, with the minor shortcoming of not having a built in light, is arguably as much ahead of any other eBook reader thanks to their book service as the initial iPods were. But they lack Apple's retail strength (this is a class of device people typically like to see in stores before they buy it on-line) and Apple's marketing capability and are running against increasing competition early on. So, while I expect the Kindle 2 to easily outsell the Kindle 1, I expect it to run significantly shorter than Apple's iPod volumes.