Amazon courting Apple's iOS developers to port apps to Kindle

AppleInsider: "Amazon is actively enticing Apple's iOS App Store developers to bring their efforts to the Kindle platform, particularly educational apps, in a strategy that attempts to push ebook readers up into competition with more sophisticated, general purpose tablets. ... "

Amazon Reinstates Kindle-Lending Startup Lendle

Business Insider:: "After a bit of press and consumer outrage, Amazon's team got in touch with them [Lendle] and they're back. They had to remove their book sync feature to get into the terms of service. It's hard to know whether Amazon's crackdown was just a fluke or was pushed on them by publishers or what. In any case it's impressive how fast they responded."

Yet Another Tech IP Lawsuit: Apple Sues Amazon Over App Store Name

DailyFinance: "Apple says it holds the trademark to the 'App Store' name. That may be decided in court. The suit was filed in the federal court for the Northern District of California. The complaint stated that people might think the Amazon Appstore is owned by or associated with Apple."

Kindle’s "Real" Page Numbers - How They Did It

Per Amazon:

... With our massive selection and knowledge of print books, we were excited to be in a position to help solve this problem. We had to invent an entirely new way to match the streams of text in a print book to the streams of text in a Kindle book, and assign page numbers in Kindle books. There are hundreds of thousands of Kindle books (and growing every day), so to handle a job of this size, we turned to our Amazon Web Services computing fabric. We created algorithms to match the text of print books to Kindle books and organized all of this in the cloud, using our own AWS platform. The results of this work are stored in Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, where we track the complete history of every page matching file we’ve produced. We even found a way to deliver page numbers to books that customers had already purchased – without altering those books in any way, so customers’ highlights, notes, and reading location are preserved exactly as they were.

Some other e-bookstores have added virtual “page numbers” to e-books, but we’ve found that these approaches can be confusing and often inconsistent – they don’t map to the page numbers in physical books, and in some cases they don’t account for title pages, blank pages, and other nuances that we see in print books. We’ve already received a lot of great feedback from customers who like our approach. Real page numbers are already available in tens of thousands of our most popular Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions, and we’re adding page numbers in more Kindle books every day. We want you to lose yourself in the reading, so page numbers are only displayed when you push the menu button. ...

Struggling States Try to Get Amazon to Collect Sales Tax

NYTimes: "Amazon’s skirmishes with states over whether it should collect sales taxes have been an ongoing battle. But the fighting has recently escalated, coinciding with the economic woes that have left a number of states struggling with multibillion-dollar deficits, and looking for money wherever they can find it."

Kindle 3 Catapults Amazon to 48% eReader Market Share in 2010

IDC via Reviews Of Electronics: "Amazon scooped up 48% of the eReader market [in 2010], thanks predominantly to the Kindle 3."

Crush or Get Crushed: Why B&N Needs to Be a Publisher

Michael Wolf: "Let’s face it, the total pie in books is going to shrink, and the long and unwieldy value-chain from writer to customer is going to collapse. Amazon knew this a long time ago, and that’s why they’ve been moving to disintermediate the publisher and the wholesaler in the e-book world by becoming, essentially, the entire value chain themselves. B&N should do the same, and do it quick. Sure, like Amazon, it launched its own self-pub platform in PubIt!, and it tinkered around with a few imprints on the print side for some time. But in the collapsing world of books, it’s every man for himself, and its time for B&N to accelerate its push into becoming a digital publisher."

Amazon’s New Kindle Commercial Jabs At iPad Again

SlashGear: "The Kindle commercial also accentuates the fact that their device can run up to a month on one battery charge and comes at you with a relatively affordable price point of $139. These advantages plus their overall feel-good message of 'The Book Lives On' should appeal to the true book enthusiasts. And for those book lovers considering an iPad instead, Amazon warns you again in this commercial of the imminent glare."

Analysis: Amazon Positioned for 50% Overall Market Share by End of 2012

Stephen Windwalker, Seeking Alpha: "... the low-margins interpretation [of Amazon's performance] misses another, much more dramatic story. The big story is that in just three years Amazon has positioned itself to triple its overall share of the U.S. book business for all formats. Before the end of 2012, Amazon could own more than half of the U.S. book business across all formats. ... " I agree with the above analysis and that Amazon will continue to be a great story over time, but I think the stock has gotten way ahead of itself from a P/E point-of-view. No reflection on the company, however, or its strategy.

More re: Apple App Store restrictions

Money quote: “This sudden shift perhaps tells you something about Apple’s understanding of the value of its platform,” said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “Apple started making money with devices. Maybe the new thing that everyone recognizes is the unit of economic value is the platform, not the device.” ...

AppleInsider:

... Analysts were taken aback by Apple's new restrictions, as they represent a shift away from recent attempts to be more collaborative.

Last fall, after receiving criticism for App Store restrictions that were viewed as "anti-competitive," Apple removed its ban on third-party development tools. With the more open licensing terms, Adobe resumed development of its Packager for iPhone tool for porting Flash to iOS.

Rival Google also gained from the changes, as its Google Voice application was accepted into the App Store. After Apple pulled Google Voice-enabled iPhone apps from the App Store, the US FCC launched an investigation of Apple and AT&T. ...

Does Amazon Make Money on the Kindle?

Dan Gallagher - Digits - WSJ: "The Amazon Kindle is far and away the most popular of the dedicated e-reader devices on the market. But it remains unclear just how much profit – if any – the company is able to realize from the device and its associated e-books business. ... "

Amazon Kindle ebooks outsell paperbacks

Telegraph: "Amazon has revealed that it has sold more Kindle ebooks than paperbacks in the US during the final three months of 2010. ... " And the trend has continued thus far into 2011.

Amazon Revenue Misses, Shares Plunge

What did I write yesterday? WHO called it? WHO is the man? Reuters: "Amazon posted holiday quarterly revenue that fell short of analysts' estimates and forecast disappointing first-quarter operating margins on Thursday, and its shares fell almost 10 percent. Fourth-quarter revenue for the global online retailer was $12.95 billion. Analysts on average forecast $13.01 billion. Amazon's fourth-quarter operating profit margin was 3.7 versus 5.0 a year earlier, a sign of how much Amazon and other retailers had to discount to attract customers during the holidays, analysts said. ... "

Amazon Rolls Out 'Kindle Singles' - Short Form eBooks

Betanews: "Wednesday, Web retailer Amazon launched its Kindle Singles line of literature designed specifically for consumption on e-readers. The works, priced between $1.00 and $3.00, include original works of prose, essays and theses, and the the first TEDBooks. Last October, Amazon introduced Kindle Singles as a format ideally suited for the reading habits of e-reader users. They are longer than a magazine article and shorter than a novel (around 20,000 words or 60 pages,) and specifically tailored to deliver well-developed content in a very direct manner, sort of like Reader's Digest condensed literature. ... "

Earnings Preview: Amazon.com To Report 4Q Earnings After Bell on Thursday

Bloomberg: "SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. is set to report its fourth-quarter results on Thursday after the closing bell. WHAT TO WATCH FOR: Investors will be looking for strong growth in Amazon's two biggest businesses, which are electronics and other general merchandise and books, CDs, DVDs and other media. As usual, investors will also be alert for any concrete details on sales of Amazon's Kindle e-reader." Here's what I expect: Of course, we won't get any hard numbers re: Kindle installed base. Count on it. Amazon will show significant revenue growth, but also continued tight margins which will give investors pause. Amazon is a great company with a terrific long-term 'story' and a vibrant future, but right now the stock is WAY over-valued at something like 70 x earnings and Q3 net profit margin of 2.82% (as opposed to an almost equally dismal 3.70% the year previous). Apple, by way of comparison, is selling at just above 19 x earnings, with Q4 net margin just above 22%. So, if you ask me, Amazon stock is poised for a fall. At least it should be.

Amazon Renames Kindle Digital Text Platform, now Kindle Direct Publishing

Betanews: "Amazon on Friday announced that its Kindle Digital Text Platform, or DTP, will be renamed Kindle Direct Publishing. All other aspects of the self-publishing platform appear to remain unchanged. ... "

Barclays Analyst: Amazon Will Likely Sell 12.3 Million Kindles This Year

San Fran Chronicle: "Amazon sold about 7.1 million Kindle e-readers last year, Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth estimates today in a note, and will sell 12.3 million this year. ('Though our numbers may still be conservative.') Kindle sales (devices and content) will reach $3.3 billion this year, almost 8% of Amazon's revenue, Anmuth estimates, and more than $7 billion in 2013, representing 11% of Amazon's revenue. ... "

Amazon Should Open Source the Kindle Apps

Joe Wikert via O'Reilly Insights via Forbes: "Imagine how many great new features would be implemented in this model. Rather than being limited by the fixed (and apparently small) number of developers assigned to the internal Kindle apps dev team they’d suddenly have access to as many developers as they could recruit to the open source project. They could create a world class set of apps and quickly distance themselves from the competition."

Background Downloads Come to Kindle for iOS

thenextweb: "If you’ve ever started the download of a book, flipped over to another to read while it finishes and then flipped back, you’ve been sorely disappointed. Until now, background downloads just didn’t work on the Kindle app for your iPad or iPhone. However, according to Electronista, the just-released 2.5 update to Kindle for iOS will allow you to finish (though not start) a download in the background while you enjoy other content. There’s another pretty hefty change, too. The app will now support raw files, so you can send in text from Mail, Safari and even pull in books via iTunes file sharing."

J. P. Morgan: Almost One-Third Of Internet Users Plan To Buy A Kindle

SF Chronicle: "A whopping 28% of Internet users surveyed by J. P. Morgan in December say they either own a Kindle or plan to buy one in the next year. ... The survey also bolsters the claim of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that iPad owners are buying Kindles: 40% of iPad users surveyed already own one, and 23% plan to buy one in the next year. According to J. P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan, the big price difference between the two devices -- $139 for the low-end Kindle versus $499 for the cheapest iPad -- really places them in different categories. Khan also pointed out that overall e-book revenue is exploding, going from 1% of overall book revenue in 2008 to 9% in 2010 ... "