Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Quite a dog-and-pony show at Santa Monica Airport this morning as CEO Jeff Bezos unveils the Kindle Paperwhite, the company's latest tablet. The touchscreen device has a self-lighting screen and an eight-week battery life (even with the light on). The Paperwhite is priced at $119 (a 3G version is $179). The technology appears similar to the Barnes & Noble Nook. In addition, several other products are being updated, including the Kindle Fire. From Business Insider:
The new tablet will have an 8.9-inch display, which is slightly larger than the original 7-inch Kindle Fire. Amazon also unveiled an updated version of its old Kindle Fire tablet, which includes some more powerful guts and a big price cut to $159. The Fire HD's screen will have a higher resolution and special Wi-Fi antennas that'll give the device a faster connection to the web.
From Cnet:
The first introduction of the day was the Kindle Paperwhite, which Bezos boasted as something that "didn't exist" so Amazon "had to invent it." Bezos commented that Amazon developers took cues from the Kindle Fire, but essentially this is Amazon's answer to Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. The device is essentially comprised of three display stacks: a patented light guide, capacitive touch, and a paperwhite display. The Kindle Paperwhite display includes 62 percent more pixels at 212 pixels per inch to offer what might be the closest any e-reader has come to actually replicating the look of paper pages.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.