Steve Jobs Doesn’t Like The Kindle

In a somewhat lacklustre interview yesterday with David Pouge over at the New York Times, Steve Jobs had this to say about the Amazon Kindle…

“I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

He said that Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this point, and pointed out that Amazon.com, for example, doesn’t ever say how many Kindles it sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

I disagree. I would love a Kindle, and pretty much everyone I’ve told about it would love one too. The biggest barriers to getting one right now are, a) no-one knows about it and b) they’re pretty damn expensive.

Whereas as Apple like to keep their products hovering around the same price-point by adding new features and hardware with every new release, I’m hoping the Kindle stays simple, true to it’s purpose and comes down in price every few months. I also don’t think Amazon would fare very well if it entered into a fist fight with other hardware manufacturers like Sony, who clearly don’t want to repeat their iPod mistakes by letting someone else corner a new portable electronics market.

Unlike Steve, I predict a big future for the humble e-reader. I also predict a disastrous string of e-readers come music players come internet devices. I’m looking at you Sony.