Last year was the first calendar year since 2008 where Amazon didn’t release a new Kindle model, and that was the year after the very first Kindle was released so that’s going all the way back to the beginning.
The current Kindle Paperwhite was released in 2018, and both the entry-level Kindle and Kindle Oasis were released in 2019, and so was the Kids Kindle (which is the same as the entry-level model).
Amazon clearly doesn’t care about Kindles nearly as much as they used to. There was a time when Amazon hosted press conferences when revealing new Kindles. There was a time when they would counter competitor’s ideas with new models and new features, but those days are long gone.
It took Amazon three years to finally add a warm frontlight option to the Kindle lineup, and then they only included it on the most expensive Kindle Oasis model. Meanwhile most other mid-level ebook readers have had warm frontlights for years.
The Kindle Paperwhite sells for $129, $149 without ads, and it lacks a warm frontlight. The Kobo Clara HD and Nook Glowlight 3 both sell for $119 and both have a warm frontlight.
It’s like Amazon doesn’t even care to compete anymore. At this point it wouldn’t be surprising to see them start releasing new Kindles much less frequently than they already do.
What if they started waiting 5 years between new releases? It took them over three years to replace the last Paperwhite model, and basically all they did was made the new one waterproof and added more storage space—both are things 90% of users will never use. The current model was released in 2018. It’s not a stretch to think they could keep it around for another 2+ years based on the way things have been going.
The current Oasis model was released in 2019 but they used the exact same design as the previous model that was released in 2017—all they did was add a warm frontlight to the previous model so that design will be 4 years old this year, and they’ve been using the same general Paperwhite design since 2012.
New ideas and new Kindle releases have really started to slow down over the past few years. Kindles have achieved a level of complacency not found in Amazon’s other product lines. All they seem to care about is Alexa and Echo and Fire TV products these days. Kindles have been forgotten. Innovation is nonexistent.
Last year some new ebook readers started coming out with color E Ink screens, like the Poke2 Color and Pocketbook Color. But I don’t expect to see a color Kindle anytime soon, if ever.
People have been asking for larger Kindles for years. Not everyone has perfect eyesight, and some just prefer to read on a larger screen like some people like hardcovers over paperbacks, and yet Amazon keeps refusing to accommodate a market that clearly exists. Why does Amazon offer a 10-inch Fire tablet but not a 10-inch Kindle? It doesn’t make any sense.
At least Onyx’s ereaders run the Kindle app well enough to provide an alternative to the limited Kindle selection. At some point Amazon should consider letting other companies make reading devices that support Kindle ebooks natively. If they don’t want to keep making E Ink Kindles then they should at least let other E Ink devices support Kindle ebooks without the hassles of converting formats.
Wow. I guess snark is what people look for in a blog these days, but I think you’re being a little hard on Amazon here. They still outsell everyone else by a wide margin. I’ve tried out all the other major brands and the innovators like Kobo and Nook have issues that make their readers inferior for my uses. Kindle has better software and the ability to do things like receive files sent from computers and phones and automatically convert PDFs, word, and text documents. They make it a pain to get to, but Kindles can read to you. These things might not be as cool or trendy as what other brands are doing, but Kindles just work very well and and are very practical. They’re the Toyotas of e-reader.
I don’t think I’m being hard on Amazon at all; I’m just telling the truth. Back in the early days they used to care a lot more than they do now. Most people haven’t been following Kindles long enough to remember, but Kindles used to be a big deal for Amazon. Now they just keep releasing the same Kindles over and over again with little to no actual improvements. 99% of people are never going to drop their Kindle in water, but that’s all we get after 6 years of being stuck with the same exact Paperwhite design.
People want a warm frontlight and a larger screen, and some want a Kindle with a color E Ink screen, but no one at Amazon cares anymore. They’re too busy working on an Alexa toothbrush that can do your taxes and order toothpaste wirelessly. I now use an Onyx ereader more than I use a Kindle. Onyx has added more new features and made more improvements in the past couple of years than Amazon has in the past 6. It’s not even close anymore. They’ve been selling the Paperwhite going on 9 years now. They added a 300ppi screen to it in 2015 and that was the last noteworthy advancement. If it wasn’t for the Oasis, Kindle innovation would be completely dead at this point, and a lot of people simply don’t like the asymmetrical design of the Oasis so they aren’t helping their own cause any. I think more people would be interested in a Kindle Voyage 2 than the Oasis but that’s never going to happen. Just like a Kindle with a screen larger than 7-inches is never going to happen.
Onyx Boox is doing too much and Kindle is doing too little. What’s a good amount to do?
Somewhere in the middle, in the goldilocks zone. 🙂
I think you’ve misdiagnosed the position. Just as we no longer expect significant advances in, for example, pencils, or ballpoint pens, I don’t expect any further advances in e-readers in the coming years, except for gradual evolutionary change such as yet longer battery life and lighter weight.
That’s not ‘Amazon not caring’, it’s Amazon rightly not wasting time and money on changing things for the sake of it. The refresh cycle for e-readers is – and quite properly should be – exponentially slower than the technology for, say, mobile phones in the first 5 years of the iPhone. Every technology reaches technological maturity, and I submit that is the phase which e-readers have now reached.
I used to agree with that stance but there are a lot of other directions Amazon could take Kindles but they choose not to. Different screen sizes, warm frontlights, page buttons, note-taking using a stylus, color E Ink, text-to-speech, wireless charging, USB-C support—there are plenty of useful features out there that Kindles continue to ignore. People shouldn’t have to shell out a minimum of $250 to get a Kindle with page buttons and a warm frontlight. The Nook Glowlight 3 offers both of those features for $119, but Nook software isn’t very good. Kindles have good software but the hardware is lagging way behind. Amazon is the only company still selling a “new” ereader with a 167ppi screen, the same resolution the very first Kindle had way back in 2007.
Sadly, e-readers are a much smaller fraction of Amazon’s incomes than they were 10 plus years ago(internet services, tv and Amazon’s marketplace are now almost to big to fail). They have somewhat cornered the e-book market and selling content seems to be all important to Amazon. If you dominate e-book content in a DRMed market it becomes very hard for the Average reader to chose another option, leaving no pressure for innovation on devices.
While I think Amazon may put out a larger e-reader…the question is…why wait for them?? Onyx is starting to look promising; if they had page turn buttons, I probably would have purchased one. Kobo also has good features for many readers.
“All they seem to care about is Alexa and Echo and Fire TV products these days”
As well as AWS and destroying competition with their Monopoly.
Kindle is dead. But at least they should license their platform to other companies like Onyx.
The jack in my voyage died so I’ve been using my very ancient paperwhite. It’s 5-6 years old and becoming sluggish. I’ve considered a new paperwhite, but I may just get a voyage from ebay. Voyage was my favorite Kindle. I don’t even want an Oasis – I read a lot on bed and hate the design of a larger edge on one side.
I prefer the Voyage to the Paperwhite as well. The argument can be made it’s still the best Kindle available, and considering it was released in 2014 that’s just sad and proves the point I’m trying to make.
I completely agree with the article. I have been hoping for a large screen Kindle with physical buttons and a warm light for a long time. Amazon is interested in everything else but e-readers these days. Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble are not taking advantage of the gap. I am not interested in buying e-readers I cannot see, but Pocketbook seems to have some good options. Even Kobo’s e-readers are more innovative than Kindles today.
We are a very small group to begin with. Most people I know use phones and tablets to read. I am holding on to my aged Kindle for now, but if something happens to it, I am not getting another outdated e-reader from Amazon.
I can’t help but think that the improvements made in tablet displays has had an affect on E-ink popularity. While they still cause more eye-strain than E-ink as the eye hunts for the elusive focal plane, they are not near as bad as even five years ago. I think most people just don’t have a problem reading on tablets and phones anymore. It’s just not a growing market and Amazon has decided it’s not worth retaining market share.in a stagnate market.
I suppose there is some merit to your criticism. Amazon did improve on the Basic model by doubling the memory. It would have been nice if they also upgraded the screen to 300 PPI, but then there would be little difference between it and the Paperwhite. The area that I think Amazon should focus on is on the user interface, that needs some retooling, especially the VoiceView feature. That is not user friendly at all. I don’t know how it would be for someone who is sight impaired. .The Kindle is really a single purpose device, to read books. the fact that it also does voiceview and audiobooks still sets it apart form other makes. Also going for it is the ease in being able to sideload books to it. I upgraded my Kindle basic with wireless charging as I really don’t need to sideload books by connecting it to my computer as I can just send them wirelessly with the amazon provided send-to-kindle app. The only time to really connect to the computer would be to install the firmware updates. I think the thing they should improve is the user interface, the web browser, and lower the price. Maybe improving the speed of the CPU would be good. but there is not much they could improve hardware wise for a single purpose device other than just work on improving the already wonderful software suit available for it. . Color screens really aren’t good enough as they have much lower resolution and dull colors. So it makes sense not to bother to sell something that is inferior to what they offer now. The resolution of the Basic model is not half bad. Now that all the models sport 8 GB of ram, there is storage room for an improved firmware and user interface.
“People have been asking for larger Kindles for years. Not everyone has perfect eyesight, and some just prefer to read on a larger screen like some people like hardcovers over paperbacks, and yet Amazon keeps refusing to accommodate a market that clearly exists. Why does Amazon offer a 10-inch Fire tablet but not a 10-inch Kindle? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I totally agree. It also boils down to the same thing when it comes to the regular Fire tablet line up they have. Not everyone wants the lower screen resolution compared to the now discontinued Fire HDX line up. If I’m not mistaken I’ve read online somewhere that there have been people to go to the extreme such as filing a petition to Amazon desperately asking for the HDX lineup to return because it had a better screen resolution along with the Mayday feature. It’s truly a beloved tablet lineup of rom Amazon. They could still keep the current lower spec/price lineup while still offering a higher spec lineup. Still keep a lower tier while offering a higher tier. All a person has to do is go on eBay to see that people are still buying used/refurbished HDX’s because they were and still are very good popular tablets. Heck, I even purchased a used HDX because it was such a great tablet that I originally bought in late 2014 going into 2015 and wanted one as a backup…But what does Amazon do after being repeatedly told there’s still a market for the Fire HDX line? Amazon does just like they’ve been doing for the Kindle eReader lineup, which is nothing. It’s completely fallen on deaf ears! I guess Amazon feels that they know everything and we as the consumers know nothing.
I currently own the current Paperwhite, the previous generation Paperwhite, the Basic Kindle 2019 with the new Frontlight, Kobo Aura One, as well as the white Kindle DX and the Graphite versions. (Used to own the Kindle Voyage, Paperwhites 1&2 along with the one that had 212 PPI, the 2017 Oasis, and the Nook 3)
I have often thought to myself why won’t Amazon make an upgraded modern version of the Kindle DX since its 9.7” which is basically a 10 inch screen. In my opinion there’s a market for it and other people as well as myself have written it in their reviews of the device on Amazon. Not everyone has good eyesight like you stated and also because some people including myself prefer to read on something bigger. Amazon doesn’t listen, so what it does is it drives people to Amazon’s competitors to attain these highly requested devices with the specs that they desire.
I’m assuming because Amazon has a lot of the eReader market monopolized, they feel they don’t have to put anymore effort into innovating like they use to.
Kindle and Kobo releases have been largely cosmetic for years now. What is disappointing is that even when they have an obvious design defect that they should address (plastic screen on the Paperwhite, uneven light on the Forma) they don’t.
Unlike Ross I hardly think that ereaders are perfect. They frankly need alot of work. I would like to see eink with native contrast so high that the frontlight is not a necessary bandaid. I would like to see software that makes managing collections on the device easy (and not a huge pain in the butt). I would like to see huge improvements on reading newspapers. It would be nice if it was as effortless as reading them on a browser on a pc or mobile device. I would like to see major improvements on reading pdfs, maybe even AFFORDABLE large screen eink readers. And eink readers do need to be faster and more responsive for frankly everything other than reading the latest bestseller novel.
Come on! We should expect more. But the problem is that eink readers are a niche device and one company has a monopoly which combined creates terrible stagnation.