Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Kindle ready for the beach?

A dilemma facing Kindle owners is whether the electronic reader from Amazon is beach-ready. Think about it--sand, saltwater, sun...not exactly a recipe for keeping any electronics device in good shape during the summertime beach season.

In case you've missed it, the Kindle is the small notebook-sized device, sold by Amazon ($489 for the new Kindle DX), which holds thousands of books, periodicals and magazines. And, while the Kindle has had successful sales--estimated by one analyst at 500,000 in 2008 and 300,000 in the first quarter of 2009--overall only one in every 400 Americans or so has the device. Amazon does report that sales of books for the Kindle are already 35% of those for print, a data point which hints at the growth path for the readers.

But, has the Kindle met its match at the beach, or even the pool? Much like the i-Pod, beach and pool goers will have to reckon with the elements when they consider taking their Kindle...or a good, old-fashioned hardback or paperback.

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