Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Color Kindle `still a long way out' said Amazon CEO


A color version of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader may come finally, but it won't be shortly.

Speaking Tuesday at the online retailer's yearly shareholder meeting in Seattle, founder & CEO Jeff Bezos said that adding color to the Kindle's "electronic ink" display is a complicated technical challenge & that a color screen is "still a long way out." Bezos said he's seen things "in the laboratory" that are "still not prepared for prime-time production."

Tablet computers such as Apple Inc.'s iPad & some e-readers sport LCD displays, which can show color. But those are harder to see in sunlight & consume much extra power than e-ink displays.

As usual, Bezos did not detail how many Kindles Amazon has sold since the product launched in 2007, except to say customers have bought "millions" of them.

Also Tuesday, Bezos said that Amazon Web Services, which sells Web hosting & data-storage services to other companies, has the potential to be as big as Amazon's retail business ultimately. He called the overall market for such services a "very, very large area" that is usually not being done efficiently.

"Whenever something is done inefficiently, that creates an opportunity," Bezos said.

For now Amazon's Web services division has a long way to go. It is part of a group that had $188 million in revenue in the first quarter, whereas Amazon's retail operations brought in nearly $7 billion.

Source YAHOO

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