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Princeton University has joined ranks with Yale, Oxford and UC Berkeley in the bid to create textbooks for the Kindle. Although a lot of digital text reading devices were launched prior to Kindle, but I guess it might have come to market just about the right time, with the right feature set.
Princeton’s announcement is not a major quantitative milestone for Kindle adoption but given the stature of the university, it is a significant breakthrough on Kindle’s part. If Amazon could manage to have the big names in U.S. universities on board the long tail of 2,500 four year universities would surely follow.
An unexpected competitor for Kindle could be the iPhone 3G. Although the device is not designed for this purpose it could still be used to read books. However, since students have to read so much text I really doubt if iPhone 3G could ever become a decent replacement for Kindle. Yes, it would be used for reading on the go, but for serious stuff Kindle would be the device of choice.
Students could not just read textbooks, they could also search for concepts and titles, and download these titles via web onto their device using Kindle’s wireless service. In addition to this, students can also highlight and make notes on Kindle, which makes it an ideal companion in classrooms.
Amazon has entered the Digital Text Book device market just at the right time, and they should really try to squeeze an unprecedented advantage from it by aggressively pursuing the European and Asian markets as well.
